[Aztlan] Maya Pictographs

[John F. Schwaller]

*http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=36237

GUATEMALA CITY (EFE).-* Spanish researchers from Valencia University 
presented in Guatemala a book analyzing the meaning of drawings and 
incisions on a Mayan architectural decoration in the form of a mask 
dating back to between 300 and 600 A.D.

The publication "Los Grafitos Mayas" (Mayan Pictographs) has been 
prepared by the team of Spanish and Guatemalan researchers who last 
January announced the discovery of a stucco mask at the La Blanca 
archaeological project in the province of Peten in northern Guatemala.

The book, according to Spanish academic Gaspar Muñoz Cosme, who has 
directed the project for the last six years, "seeks to spark interest 
and vindicate the the importance of pictographs, which are normally seen 
as a minor art" within the Mayan culture.

The decorations on the mask, Muñoz said, "are of great quality, and show 
that whoever sculpted them were true artists," since they were able to 
immortalize the cultural characteristics of that ancestral civilization.

The type of wall paintings known as pictographs or pictograms are 
typically found inside Mayan constructions.

This book, according to Muñoz, is considered the "most extensive and 
complete" scientific publication to date on Mayan pictographs, since it 
compiles a number of studies carried out at different archaeological 
sites in Guatemala, Mexico and Belize.

The Spanish archaeologists found the Mayan mask last year "by chance" in 
the ruins of Chilonche, at some 600 kilometers (373 miles) north of the 
Guatemalan capital. EFE

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John F. Schwaller
President
SUNY - Potsdam
44 Pierrepont Ave.
Potsdam, NY  13676
Tel. 315-267-2100
FAX 315-267-2496