David Stuart (Mayanist)

David S. Stuart (born 1965) is an archaeologist and

epigrapher specializing in the study of ancient David Stuart
Mesoamerica, the area now called Mexico and Central
America. His work has studied many aspects of the
ancient Maya civilization. He is widely recognized for
his breakthroughs in deciphering Maya hieroglyphs
and interpreting Maya art and iconography, starting at
an early age. He is the youngest person ever to receive
a MacArthur Fellowship, at age 18. He currently
teaches at the University of Texas at Austin and his
current research focuses on the understanding of Maya
culture, religion and history through their visual
culture and writing system.

Early life
Stuart is the son of the archaeologist George E. Stuart
and the writer, artist and illustrator Gene Strickland Stuart in 2019
Stuart,[1] both of whom wrote extensively for the Born 1965 (age 58–59)
National Geographic Society. He spent much of his Washington, D.C., US
childhood accompanying his parents on archaeological
Occupations Archaeologist · epigrapher · art
digs and expeditions in Mexico and Guatemala. There
historian
he developed a deep interest in Maya culture,
especially their art and hieroglyphs, absorbing Title Schele Professor of
scholarly works beginning at age 10. Shortly thereafter Mesoamerican Art and Writing,
he made original contributions to the field of Department of Art and Art
decipherment and began working closely with the History, The University of Texas
noted Mayanist Linda Schele, focusing on the art of at Austin
inscriptions of Palenque. Stuart gave his first scholarly Awards MacArthur Fellowship,
paper at the age of 12 at the 1978 Mesa Redonda de Guggenheim Fellowship
Palenque, an international conference of
Academic background
Mesoamerican scholars.
Education Princeton University (B.A.)
Vanderbilt University (Ph.D.)

Research Academic work

Institutions University of Texas at Austin
Stuart is best known for his discoveries on the nature Harvard University
of Maya hieroglyphic writing from the 1980s to the
present. By 1985 scholars had already generally recognized that there were two types of signs in the
script: logograms (word signs) and syllables (consonant-vowel or CV). However, only a limited amount
of Maya texts could be read in their original language, Classic Mayan, due to an imprecise understanding
of the visual nature of the script, especially the ways signs formed and combined. Stuart demonstrated
that signs could have a great many variants and forms, all visually distinct yet functionally equivalent.
The recognition of the principles behind graphic variation and structure helped lead to a number of
breakthroughs. Stuart proposed the decipherments of many new syllables and logograms in the 1980s and
1990s, which in turn provided a more firm basis for a new wave of linguistic analyses of Maya texts
during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Stuart has also contributed a number of studies of Maya art, history and religion, especially at the sites of
Copán, Palenque, Tikal, La Corona, San Bartolo and Xultun. in the late 1990s he produced a new
interpretation of the history surrounding the Teotihuacan's "arrival" to the Maya area in 378 CE,
proposing this was a military overthrow of the local Tikal king, and the establishment of a new political
order. Much of Stuart's work focused on the field documentation of Maya sculpture and inscriptions at
numerous sites, through epigraphic drawing and photography. He remains actively engaged as a member
of several ongoing excavation projects in Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.

Recently Stuart expanded his research into the iconography and script of central Mexico, especially
among the Mexica. In 2018 he presented a new interpretation of the so-called Calendar Stone of
Tenochtitlan, suggesting it is not an image of an Aztec deity, but rather a deified portrait of the emperor
Moctezuma II as the sun. Stuart emphasizes its role as a political monument and image, the purpose of
which was to depict the Tenochca ruler at the center of the cosmos.

Stuart has a new book in press on the written history that pertains to Maya-Teotihuacan relations, to
appear in 2024. He is currently working on a new synthetic history of the ancient Maya, to be published
by Princeton University Press.

Career
Stuart's early work on the decipherment of Maya writing led to a MacArthur Fellowship in 1984. He is
the youngest-ever recipient of that award. His insights into the structure and content of Maya
hieroglyphic writing was highlighted in the award-winning documentary film "Breaking the Maya Code"
(Night Fire Films, 2008).

After completing his B.A. in Art and Archaeology at Princeton University in 1989, Stuart received his
Ph.D in Anthropology from Vanderbilt University in 1995. At that time he was appointed the Bartlett
Curator of Maya Hieroglyphs at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, and was a senior lecturer at
Harvard's Department of Anthropology before beginning at the University of Texas at Austin in 2004.

His many publications include his key early paper Ten Phonetic Syllables (1987), which laid much of the
groundwork for the now-accepted methodology of Maya hieroglyphic decipherment. In 2003 he
published a volume in the ongoing Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions series (Peabody Museum,
Harvard University), devoted to drawings and photographs of sculpture from Piedras Negras, Guatemala.
He co-authored Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya (Thames and Hudson, 2008) with his father, George
Stuart. His book The Order of Days (Random House, 2011) explored the important role of time and
cosmology in Classic Maya civilization, while also debunking the 2012 phenomenon claim that the Maya
viewed 2012 as the end of their elaborate calendar. At present he is working on a new book which will
offer a detailed analysis of the three temples of the Cross Group complex at Palenque.
Stuart is currently the director of The Mesoamerica Center at The University of Texas at Austin, which
fosters multi-disciplinary studies on ancient American art and culture. He also oversees the activities of
the Casa Herrera, UT's academic research center in Antigua, Guatemala, devoted to studies in the art,
archaeology and culture of wider Mesoamerica.

Bibliography
Ten Phonetic Syllables (1987)
Classic Maya Place Names (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1994) with
Stephen Houston
Piedras Negras, Vol. 9, part 1, in Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions series ([Link]
[Link]/web/20120610151817/[Link] (Peabody
Museum, Harvard University), 2003, with Ian Graham
The Inscriptions from Temple XIX at Palenque (The Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute,
2005)
Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya (Thames and Hudson, 2008) with George Stuart
The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya (University of
Texas Press, 2011) with Stephen Houston and Karl Taube
The Order of Days: The Maya World and the Truth about 2012 (Random House – Harmony,
2011)

References
1. Bart Barnes (June 23, 2014). "George E. Stuart III, 79, National Geographic staff
archeologist and magazine editor, dies" ([Link]
eorge-e-stuart-iii-79-a-national-geographic-staff-archeologist-and-magazine-editor-dies/201
4/06/23/7bb0231a-faf2-11e3-932c-0a55b81f48ce_story.html). The Washington Post.
Retrieved March 27, 2020.

Further reading
Coe, Michael D. (1992). Breaking the Maya Code ([Link]
00coem_0). London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05061-9. OCLC 26605966 ([Link]
[Link]/oclc/26605966).
Coe, Michael D.; Mark van Stone (2005). Reading the Maya Glyphs ([Link]
eadingmayaglyph0000coem) (2nd ed.). London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-
28553-4. OCLC 60532227 ([Link]
D'Amico, Rob (May 2, 2008). "Living Maya: Austin becomes a hotbed of past and future Maya
knowledge" ([Link] (online
edition). The Austin Chronicle. Austin, TX: Austin Chronicle Corp. OCLC 32732454 ([Link]
[Link]/oclc/32732454). Retrieved May 5, 2008.
Helferich, Gerard (May 21, 2011). "Cosmic Conspiracy Theories" ([Link]
SB10001424052748703730804576319103670482460) (online edition). The Wall Street
Journal. New York, NY: News Corp. Retrieved October 10, 2014.

External links
Tour Copán with David Stuart ([Link]
Online articles written by Dr. Stuart ([Link]
Maya Decipherment weblog ([Link]
Maya Field Workshops, Field Classes with David Stuart ([Link]

Retrieved from "[Link]