Doctoral Dissertation Research: Assembling the Ancient: Public Science in the Decipherment of Maya Hieroglyphs

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

This project focuses ethnographic attention on series of workshops in Palenque, Mexico; Austin, Texas; and Antigua, Guatemala, that have connected scholars striving to discover the history of Maya civilization with members of the general public casually or non-academically interested in the ancient Maya and their writing. While the project is not explicitly focused on developing more effective pedagogy in such workshop spaces, it does seek to describe the ways in which connections between scholars and the public have shaped what counts (scientifically) as historical accuracy. This is a particularly significant history to articulate because many of the participants in such workshops, especially those in Antigua, have been Maya, an underrepresented and politically disenfranchised group in Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States. While the linguistic knowledge of these workshop participants has played an irreducible role in hieroglyphic decipherment, they have received little in the way of material compensation and recognition of intellectual and cultural property. To the contrary, the narratives of ancient Maya violence produced by epigraphers have been used to rationalize ongoing state marginalization of indigenous communities. This project will show how such scientific knowledge has been used in unexpected ways to further disadvantage those that it claims to represent. Intellectual Merit. The proposed historical ethnography brings the perspectives of science and technology studies (STS) to bear on a new topical area: the decipherment of ancient Maya hieroglyphs. In so doing, the project relays the concerns of STS into the production of historical knowledge. While historical accounts of Maya hieroglyphic decipherment have emerged recently, their authors have all been actively involved in the process of decipherment and subsequent developments within the field of epigraphy. Such authors have produced narrow historical narratives of epigraphy's progressive accumulation of knowledge, without accounting for the diverse participants included in the scientific process. In contrast, this ethnographic treatment seeks to document the differentially interested participants in the process of decipherment and the subsequent uses of hieroglyphic knowledge outside of academic conversations. This will be accomplished through an ethnographic methodology combining interviews with scholars, enthusiasts, and Maya involved in three series of collaborative scientific workshops, and narrative analysis of published and unpublished documents produced and dispersed in such workshop spaces. The proposed phases of research extend ethnographic and archival research already conducted. Ultimately, this project uses the conceptual resources of STS and the empirical commitment of ethnography to help render the scientific process and societal consequences of hieroglyphic knowledge production more transparent. Broader Impact. As ethnography is an intrinsically collaborative field, this study will seek to develop partnerships with those who have been involved in workshops, striving to ensure that the history that is produced feeds back into the process of workshop pedagogy. The work will be publicly presented in English and Spanish at conferences attended by Maya scholars and activists in the United States and Guatemala. Finally, in addition to academic presentations and publications, research reports will be produced for public distribution in English and Spanish on the website of the Maya Exploration Center (www.mayaexploration.org), a nonprofit organization that sponsors Maya research and study abroad opportunities.