Marc Zender | |
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | A Study of Classic Maya Priesthood (2004) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Anthropologist,epigrapher,linguist |
Sub-discipline | |
Main interests |
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Marc Zender is an anthropologist,epigrapher,and linguist noted for his work on Maya hieroglyphic writing. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University and a research affiliate at the Middle American Research Institute. [1] His research interests include anthropological and historical linguistics,comparative writing systems,and archaeological decipherment,with a regional focus on Mesoamerica (particularly Mayan,Ch'orti',and Nahuatl/Aztec). He is the author of several books and dozens of articles touching on these themes.
Zender obtained a BA in anthropology from the University of British Columbia in 1997,and his MA (1999) and PhD (2004) from the University of Calgary. His dissertation was entitled A Study on Classic Maya Priesthood. [1] [2]
Marc Zender presents a 24 lecture series entitled "Writing and Civilization:Ancient Worlds to Modernity" where he covers the anthropologic history of language reduced to writing. [3] This The Great Courses college level course traces the origin and development of writing.
Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson was a leading English Mesoamerican archaeologist,ethnohistorian,and epigrapher. While working in the United States,he dominated Maya studies and particularly the study of the Maya script until well into the 1960s.
Classic Maya is the oldest historically attested member of the Mayan language family. It is the main language documented in the pre-Columbian inscriptions of the classical period of the Maya civilization. It is also the common ancestor of the Cholan branch of the Mayan language family. Contemporary descendants of classical Maya include Chʼol and Chʼortiʼ. Speakers of these languages can understand many Classic Mayan words.
Maya codices are folding books written by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in Maya hieroglyphic script on Mesoamerican bark paper. The folding books are the products of professional scribes working under the patronage of deities such as the Tonsured Maize God and the Howler Monkey Gods. The codices have been named for the cities where they eventually settled. The Dresden codex is generally considered the most important of the few that survive.
Maya script,also known as Maya glyphs,is historically the native writing system of the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica and is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered. The earliest inscriptions found which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BCE in San Bartolo,Guatemala. Maya writing was in continuous use throughout Mesoamerica until the Spanish conquest of the Maya in the 16th and 17th centuries. Though modern Mayan languages are almost entirely written using the Latin alphabet rather than Maya script,there have been recent developments encouraging a revival of the Maya glyph system.
The Chʼortiʼlanguage is a Mayan language,spoken by the indigenous Maya people who are also known as the Chʼortiʼor ChʼortiʼMaya. Chʼortiʼis a direct descendant of the Classic Maya language in which many of the pre-Columbian inscriptions using the Maya script were written. Chʼortiʼis the modern version of the ancient Mayan language Chʼolan.
Ajaw or Ahau ('Lord') is a pre-Columbian Maya political title attested from epigraphic inscriptions. It is also the name of the 20th day of the tzolkʼin,the Maya divinatory calendar,on which a ruler's kʼatun-ending rituals would fall.
Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov was a Soviet and Russian linguist,epigrapher,and ethnographer. He became the founder of the Soviet school of Mayan studies,and his identification of the existence of syllabic signs proved an essential step forward in the eventual decipherment of the Mayan script,the writing system used by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica.
Joljaʼ is an archaeological site of the pre-Columbian Mayan civilization,located in the Chiapas highlands of central southern Mexico. Also known as Cueva de Jolja' in Spanish,the site is a cave which contains a painted mural and a number of inscriptions in the Mayan script which date back to the Early Classic period.
Tatiana Proskouriakoff was a Russian-American Mayanist scholar and archaeologist who contributed significantly to the deciphering of Maya hieroglyphs,the writing system of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica.
Michael Douglas Coe was an American archaeologist,anthropologist,epigrapher,and author. He is known for his research on pre-Columbian Mesoamerica,particularly the Maya,and was among the foremost Mayanists of the late twentieth century. He specialised in comparative studies of ancient tropical forest civilizations,such as those of Central America and Southeast Asia. He held the chair of Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology,Emeritus,Yale University,and was curator emeritus of the Anthropology collection in the Peabody Museum of Natural History,where he had been curator from 1968 to 1994.
Mesoamerica,along with Mesopotamia and China,is one of three known places in the world where writing is thought to have developed independently. Mesoamerican scripts deciphered to date are a combination of logographic and syllabic systems. They are often called hieroglyphs due to the iconic shapes of many of the glyphs,a pattern superficially similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs. Fifteen distinct writing systems have been identified in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica,many from a single inscription. The limits of archaeological dating methods make it difficult to establish which was the earliest and hence the progenitor from which the others developed. The best documented and deciphered Mesoamerican writing system,and the most widely known,is the classic Maya script. Earlier scripts with poorer and varying levels of decipherment include the Olmec hieroglyphs,the Zapotec script,and the Isthmian script,all of which date back to the 1st millennium BC. An extensive Mesoamerican literature has been conserved,partly in indigenous scripts and partly in postconquest transcriptions in the Latin script.
David Humiston Kelley was an American archaeologist and epigrapher. He was associated with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,and later with the University of Calgary. He is most noted for his work on the phonetic analysis and major contributions toward the decipherment of the writing system used by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica,the Maya script.
Floyd Glenn Lounsbury was an American linguist,anthropologist and Mayanist scholar and epigrapher,best known for his work on linguistic and cultural systems of a variety of North and South American languages. Equally important were his contributions to understanding the hieroglyphs,culture and history of the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
David S. Stuart is an archaeologist and epigrapher specializing in the study of ancient 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.
Merle Greene Robertson was an American artist,art historian,archaeologist,lecturer and Mayanist researcher,renowned for her extensive work towards the investigation and preservation of the art,iconography,and writing of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Central America. She is most famous for her rubbings of Maya carved stelae,sculpture,and carved stone,particularly at the Maya sites of Tikal and Palenque.
Simon Martin is a British epigrapher,historian,writer and Mayanist scholar. He is best known for his contributions to the study and decipherment of the Maya script,the writing system used by the pre-Columbian Maya civilisation of Mesoamerica. As one of the leading epigraphers active in contemporary Mayanist research,Martin has specialised in the study of the political interactions and dynastic histories of Classic-era Maya polities. Since 2003 Martin has held positions at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology where he is currently an Associate Curator and Keeper in the American Section,while teaching select courses as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Peter Mathews is an Australian archaeologist,epigrapher,and Mayanist.
Nikolai Grube is a German epigrapher. He was born in Bonn in 1962. Grube entered the University of Hamburg in 1982 and graduated in 1985. His doctoral thesis was published at the same university in 1990. After he received his doctorate,Grube moved to the University of Bonn. Nikolai Grube has been heavily involved in the decipherment of the Maya hieroglyphic script.
The Middle American Research Institute was established at Tulane University in 1924.
Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo,was a Spanish archaeologist,historian and epigraphist,one of the greatest experts in Mayan culture,researcher and specialist in writing and deciphering its texts. He was also a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid.