Dissertation Research: Mayan Ideology and Power

在Richard Leventhal博士的指导下，MS Julia Sanchez将为她的博士论文收集数据。她将研究出现在许多玛雅考古遗址的象形文字。玛雅人是史前新大陆少数几个发展文字的社会之一，他们的象形文字在许多地方被保存在石头和石膏上。因为他们达到了社会复杂性的高级水平，建造了精致的寺庙，并在今天很少或没有居民的低地热带环境中生存下来，他们构成了人类学兴趣的焦点。许多考古学家和铭文学家翻译和研究了玛雅文字，以便深入了解产生这些文字的社会精英。在她的分析中，桑切斯女士不仅会研究象形文字信息的内容，还会研究它们所在的物理环境。她意识到，不同的环境差异很大，有些铭文是在公共场所，因此对大量不同数量的人来说是可见的，而另一些铭文则位于诸如寺庙内部等限制进入的区域。她将参观五个考古遗址，绘制铭文位置，并根据公众访问和可见性对它们进行分类。她将把这个变量与这些作品所包含的信息联系起来，并确定信息与目标受众的关系如何变化。考古学家希望了解社会等级制度是如何产生的，以及在传统社会中，精英和统治者是如何维持社会控制的。史前玛雅人的政治组织还没有被很好地理解，桑切斯女士的研究很重要，因为它应该为控制机制提供新的线索。这项工作也很重要，因为它将有助于培养一位非常有前途的年轻科学家。

Under the direction of Dr. Richard Leventhal MS Julia Sanchez will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. She will study glyphs present at a number of Mayan archaeological sites. The Mayans were one of the few prehistoric New World societies to develop writing and their glyphs are preserved in stone and plaster in many places. Because they reached an advanced level of social complexity, built elaborate temples and survived in lowland tropical environments with few or no inhabitants today they constitute a focus of intense anthropological interest. Many archaeologists and eipgraphers have translated and studied Mayan writing for insight provided into the elite elements of the society which produced them. In her analysis MS Sanchez will examine not only the content of glyphic messages but also the physical context in which they are located. She has realized that contexts vary markedly and that some inscriptions are in public places and thus visible to large and diverse numbers of people while others are located in areas such as temple interiors where access was limited. She will visit five archaeological sites, plot inscription positions and categorize them in terms of public access and visibility. She will relate this variable to the message which these writings contain and determine how the message varies in relation to intended audience. Archaeologists wish to understand how social hierarchies emerge and how, in traditional societies, elites and rulers maintain social control. The political organization of the prehistoric Maya is not well understood and MS Sanchez's study is important because it should shed new light on mechanisms of control. The work is also important because it will assist in the training of a very promising young scientist.