It was the Piedras Negras sculptural corpus that led Proskouriakoff to craft her historical model. This hypothesis, published in a 1960 article, “Historical Implications of a Pattern of Dates at Piedras Negras, Guatemala,” would become one of the most important contributions to the study of Piedras Negras as well as of the Classic period Maya in general. In this article, Proskouriakoff (1960:455) constructed a historical narrative from the Piedras Negras sculptures and inscriptions and convincingly demonstrated that the hieroglyphs recorded dates and events from the lives of individuals and polities: in short, that the hieroglyphs recorded history.
Proskouriakoff’s argument relied not on phonetic content but on patterns she discerned in the texts and images on monument clusters. Yuri Knorosov had released a paper in Russian in 1952 and in English in 1958 arguing for syllabic phoneticism in the Maya hieroglyphs (M. Coe 1999:145-51, 162-64; Knorosov 1958), but his hypothesis was not fully accepted at the time of Proskouriakoff’s essay, nor was his system developed enough to truly crack the content of the Late Classic inscriptions. Regardless, it was not necessary to her analysis, which was based on patterns in the sculptures’ images, inscriptions, and placement, in tandem with the dates and chronology that Morley had constructed.
Proskouriakoff observed that certain glyphs appeared in similar positions on multiple monuments. She hypothesized that these glyphs were verbs and names, and she noted that comparable verb phrases associated with distinct dates appeared on monuments in different parts of the site. She saw a relationship between the appearance of the verb phrases and the monument clusters, which she conjectured related
To particular humans’ biographical events such as birth, accession, and death and constituted “life histories of individuals.” She proposed that these events correlated with the biographies of seven “rulers” in a “dynastic succession” (Proskouriakoff 1960:455, 464-65). The regularity with which Piedras Negras sculptures were commissioned, combined with patterns of emulation and sculptural placement or clustering, made her hypothesis possible, giving her the fuel to argue that these sculptures were about human rulers. Although scholars credit Proskouriakoff with this revelation, Godfrey’s (1940) classifications and recognition of patterns in the groups of the Piedras Negras stelae may have aided her study.
Proskouriakoff’s groundbreaking essay formed a significant turning point in the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs, with Piedras Negras playing a central role. Indeed, the essay transformed Maya scholarship, forever quelling previous notions that Maya sculptures were only about deities or stargazing priests (M. Coe 1999:167-84). In fact, Thompson stated in his 1972 revision of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing that Proskouriakoff’s “work has shown that the generally held view, to which I subscribed. . . regarding the impersonality of the texts on Maya stelae is completely mistaken” (Thompson 1972:v).
Scholars have made vast progress in the phonetic decipherment of the hieroglyphs in the five decades since Proskouriakoff’s 1960 essay, yet her model remains largely sound (M. Coe 1999; Houston 2000; Stuart 1992). Phonetic decipherments have confirmed and expanded upon her hypothesis about the Piedras Negras dynasts, with some adjustments, including additions of earlier rulers and the replacement of her “Ruler 6” with another historical individual (see, e. g., Houston 1983; Houston, Escobedo, and Webster 2008; Martin and Grube 2008:139-53).
Yet Proskouriakoff’s conclusions about the historical content of Piedras Negras sculptures were revelatory for reasons far beyond the identification of the polity’s rulers, for they opened a new way to look at Maya sculpture. Many studies since that time have discovered a remarkable array of historical persons, polities, and events inscribed on ancient sculptures and other media, and Mayanists have raced to decipher more hieroglyphs and draw out historical narratives from these monuments (e. g., Houston 1983; Martin and Grube 2008; Schele 1991; Schele and Freidel 1990; Stuart 1995, 2007a). New decipherments have spurred further archaeological excavations, and, in turn, new discoveries from excavations have contributed to more decipherments (e. g., Fash 1998:225; [1991] 2001; Stuart 1992).
These epigraphic studies have been vital to our ever-expanding knowledge of the Classic period Maya, for now we have historical contexts in which to place the ancient portraits, sculptures, buildings, and portable objects such as ceramic vessels and jadeite costume elements that bear texts naming their owners. The skeletons buried in Maya buildings have become kings and queens with identifiable names, and we even have names of ancient painters and carvers. Furthermore, studies have revealed that the ancient Maya were people cognizant of their own history, having recorded their present and past exploits in a variety of media. Our increased understanding of what the ancient Maya themselves wrote has opened new avenues of investigation, both about Maya sculptures and the larger body of Maya art and culture.
A number of scholars have contributed to the decipherment and interpretation of the Piedras Negras hieroglyphic texts. After Morley and Proskouriakoff, described
Above, other significant epigraphic contributions have been made by Stephen Houston (Houston 1983; Houston, Escobedo, and Webster 2008), Sarah Jackson (2005), Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube (2000, 2008), David Stuart (1985, 1998b, 2004, 2007b), Stefanie Teufel (2004), and Marc Zender (2002). These studies have revealed more historical details of the actions of rulers and other people in the Yokib polity. Some have also integrated these details with historical records from other sites to reconstruct inter-polity communication, alliance, hierarchies, and warfare (see Freidel and Schele 1990; Marcus 1976; P. Mathews 1988; Schele 1991).
World History
