Mayanist is a term which has been in widespread use from the late 19th century onwards, to refer to scholars who have specialised in research and study of the Central American pre-Columbian Maya civilization.
Mayanists working in this specialised field have drawn upon their expertise in many inter-related disciplines: archaeology, linguistics, epigraphy, ethnology, history, photography/art, architecture, astronomy, ceramics, to name but a few.
The term has particularly been adopted by those who have studied and contributed to the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics, the complex and elaborate writing system which was developed by the ancient Maya.
The term was coined by parallel with specialised fields studying other historical civilizations; see for example, Egyptologist (Ancient Egypt) and Assyriologist (Ancient Mesopotamia).
Notable deceased Mayanists
- Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg
- Frederick Catherwood [1799-1854] British architect & draftsman; explorer and early illustrator of Maya ruins.
- Désiré Charnay
- Napoleon Cordy (1902-1977)
- Ernst Förstermann
- Alfred V. Kidder [1885-1963] Instituted multidisciplinary approach [anthropology/archaeology] at Quirigua with Alfred Maudslay
- Yuri Knorozov (1922-1999)
- Teobert Maler
- Alfred Maudslay [1850-1931] Photographed, sketched & made plaster casts, and published reference material on Maya sites in the late 19th century.
- Sylvanus Morley (1883-1948)
- Augustus Le Plongeon (1826-1908)
- Tatiana Proskouriakoff (1909-1985)
- Leon de Rosny
- Ralph L. Roys
- Linda Schele [1942-1998] expert in Maya epigraphy and iconography.
- John Lloyd Stephens [1805-1852] U.S. explorer and writer
- Edward Herbert Thompson [1857-1935] Best known for excavating the Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza
- J. Eric S. Thompson (1898-1975) British Mayanist, early epigraphist.
- Jean-Frédéric Waldeck [1766?-1875]
- Gordon Willey [1913-2002]
Notable living Mayanists
- Michael Coe [born 1929] Harvard educated U.S. archaeologist
- Nikolai Grube
- Norman Hammond [born 1944] Cambridge educated archaeologist, working in Belize.
- Stephen Houston [born 1958] Yale epigrapher.
- Simon Martin
- David Stuart
- Karl Taube [born 1957] Professor of Anthropology at the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, University of California, Riverside.
See also
 |
Look up mayanist in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
