David Stuart

Years ago, visiting the remote ruins of Piedras Negras, I saw the moss-covered base of this monument, left behind by the looters. It’s still there. I would love to see them reunited someday.

Happy to finally see the new Rockefeller Wing at The Met. The Maya stela from Piedras Negras, Guatemala, always impresses (looted from there in the 60s). One detail I love is the elegantly carved skeleton with a cigar, probably representing a firefly (exoskeleton and cigar light, of course).

New to me too (or I don’t remember). Holmes was clearly doing a bit of visual restoration and clean-up in these views, like he did elsewhere. The
stairway restoration he shows is pretty accurate. The site was actually kind of a mess in 1916, after the Peabody Museum investigations 20 years earlier.

I hadn’t seen this Holmes drawing before. I was a very small part in the excavation of that building in the late 80s and early 90s.

My next book comes out in spring of 2026 from Princeton University Press: “The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya.” More details on the way.

How archaeology is feeling the big pinch from the cut-off of federal funding. Tina Warriner’s ancient Maya DNA project is one of the many unfortunate victims.

As a higher ed prof, I decided last semester to use only blue books and hand-written exercises in one class. It generally worked. Students and teachers are in the same boat, confused about differing expectations from course to course. Admins need to forge broad policies and consistent guidance asap.

Holds up, for sure.

A Teotihuacan altar at Tikal, Guatemala: central Mexican ritual and elite interaction in the Maya Lowlands | Antiquity | Cambridge Core A Teotihuacan altar at Tikal, Guatemala: central Mexican ritual and elite interaction in the Maya Lowlands - Volume 99 Issue 404

Our new article on a painted Teotihuacan altar found far from home, at the Maya city of Tikal.

doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

Humans Have Been Perfecting Avocados for 7,500 Years Ancient peoples of Latin America saved the fleshy fruits from extinction and gradually made them tastier.

Of course humans have loved avocados for thousands of years. The Maya named one of their festival months, Uniw, after avocados. A guacamole-fest every 365 days sounds like a damn good idea.

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/s...

The Ancient Maya: A New History. Coming 2026 via Princeton University Press.

The slow decipherment of Maya writing began around this time, in the 1870s, yet still unaware of this and similar documents. “Cracking the code” began just as the very last vestiges of the old writing system were being blindly copied. Something I think about as I finish up my book on Maya history.

The last Maya hieroglyphs. Copied ca. 1877, from a lost indigenous historical chronicle in Mani, Yucatán. The glyphs are dates, marking the k’atuns (20 year) periods of history. From the copy of the Codex Perez, now at the Princeton University Library.

Bad-ass duck. Also, Daffy’s self-image.

Antiquities Action's 6th Annual Symposium — Cultural Heritage in Conflict Zones: Protecting Antiquities During War 6th annual symposium of Antiquities Action, a group of students, faculty, and staff at the University of Texas at Austin working to raise awareness about the destruction, looting, and illicit traffick...

10 years ago students, staff, and faculty founded UT Antiquities Action, bringing awareness and activism re. cultural heritage to to the UT Austin campus and beyond. On Feb. 22 we'll commemorate a decade of education and advocacy at our sixth annual symposium. Join us! art.utexas.edu/events/2025-...

The Mystery of the World's Oldest Writing System Remained Unsolved Until Four Competitive Scholars Raced to Decipher It In the 1850s, cuneiform was just a series of baffling scratches on clay, waiting to spill the secrets of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia

Finally, an article on the decipherment of cuneiform that does justice to the many figures involved, the timeline, competition, and sheer philological grit.

Fascinating and colourful synopsis of how we came to be able to read tablets from ancient Mesopotamia www.smithsonianmag.com/history/myst...

Very proud of my students who did outstanding drawings of Maya texts for their first assignment. None had any background in this stuff two weeks ago. I’ve seen far worse in published articles!

“Cultural heritage.” Now there’s a red flag! Absolute bullshit sweeping over the NSF.

Grrrrr….

Our article is coming out very soon in Antiquity, on an exciting find at the Maya site of Tikal (hint: foreign relations). Details to come!

Oligarchy (noun): A government of and by a few at the top, who exercise power for their own benefit. Their power and wealth increase as they make laws that favor themselves, manipulate financial markets, and create monopolies that put more wealth into their pockets.

I have 37 students in my Mesoamerican Writing Systems class. Holy crap (k’uhul ta’). Let’s go!

Seen one, seen ‘em all.

First drawing of a temple at Tikal, ca 1853. Earlier explorers Stephens and Catherwood (a better artist!) never penetrated the Petén region of Guatemala and Campeche, so their explorations completely missed many of the largest Maya sites, Tikal among them.

Those details may show the ancient graffiti on the walls inside. This particular drawing is probably of Temple V.

RIP Jimmy Carter. The only president I ever personally met. Back in 1981 he and his sons were on a fishing trip in Mexico near Playa del Carmen, and they stopped at Coba to see the Maya ruins. My father and I were there too, and we all had lunch, talking Georgia archaeology. Amazing day.

Truer words were never spoken!

Next month in Austin we’ll be hosting a conference on this theme.

Stopped a few days ago at the Maya site of Balamku, known for its well preserved temple facade, ca. 400-450 CE. The iconography shows 4 ancestral figures being reborn from cosmic mountains. Similar ideas of landscape and ancestry are found today in Maya communities in highland Guatemala & Mexico.

My new article is out, on the importance of naming in Maya and other early writing systems. Part of an excellent new book on Maya archaeology, art and history, in honor of my friend Steve Houston.