David Stuart (Old Americanist)

David Stuart in the Museum of Copán (2002)

David Stuart (born August 7, 1965 ) is an American Old American scholar who researches the culture and writing of the Maya . Stuart was named after Linda Schele Professor of Central American Art and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin in the Faculty of Art and Art History.

life and work

David Stuart is the son of the Mayan cultural scientists George and Gene Stuart and grew up partly around Mayan ruins. He began to decipher the Mayan hieroglyphs at the age of 8 under the guidance of Linda Schele . In 1984, at the age of 18, he became the youngest recipient of the MacArthur Society's Genius grant . He graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree and a PhD in anthropology from Vanderbilt University in 1995 . He taught at Harvard University for eleven years from 1993 before becoming a professor at the University of Texas at Austin in 2004, where he also heads the Mesoamerica Center. He also directs the University's research center in Antigua , Guatemala (Casa Herrera).

He made important contributions in the field of epigraphy, especially in connection with the deciphering of the Mayan script of the pre-Columbian Mayan civilization of Central America. In particular, Stuart owes the important realization that in the Maya syllabary very many different characters can stand for one and the same syllable. That led to a breakthrough in deciphering.

He conducted research in Copán (Honduras), Palenque (Mexico), Piedras Negras (Guatemala) , La Corona (Guatemala) and San Bartolo (Peten) .

He published a book on Palenque and a popular science book on the Mayan calendar system on the occasion of the claims of esoteric circles about the end of the world allegedly predicted by the Maya for 2012.

In 2011 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship .

Fonts

Palenque, eternal city of the Maya. Thames and Hudson 2008
The order of days. Unlocking the secrets of the ancient Maya. Random House 2012
The Inscriptions from Temple XIX at Palenque. Pre-Columbian Art Research Center 2005
with Stephen D. Houston : Classic Maya Place Names. Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Art and Archeology Studies Series 1994
with Stephen D. Houston: The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya. University of Texas Press 2011
with Ian Graham: Piedras Negras. In Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions. Volume 9, Part 1, Peabody Museum Press 2005
as editor with Stephen D. Houston and Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos: The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing. , University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.

Web links

Rob D'Amico: "Living Maya: Austin becomes a hotbed of past and future Maya knowledge". The Austin Chronicle [1]

Documentary film

ARTE : The Maya Code , documentary film by David Lebrun, 89 min. USA - IMDb

Individual evidence

↑ See Michael D. Coe: Breaking the Maya Code , London, Thames & Hudson 1992. ISBN 0-500-05061-9 , pp. 231 ff.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Stuart, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Stuart, David Strickland
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American old American writer
DATE OF BIRTH	August 7, 1965

[1] See Michael D. Coe: Breaking the Maya Code , London, Thames & Hudson 1992. ISBN 0-500-05061-9 , pp. 231 ff.