Late Preclassic Inscription Documentation Project

The Need for LAPIDA

The need for the LAPIDA Project requires explanation, since published drawings for many of the texts relevant to the study of early Mayan writing already exist. For instance, at least two drawings of the Brooklyn Museum of Art jadeite pectoral mask have been published: one in Covarrubias (1957:figure 94) (Figure 1), and one in Schele and Miller (1986:150-151, Plate 45) (Figure 2). But when both drawings are compared with the photograph in Soustelle (1979:Plates 60 and 61) (Figure 3), it can be appreciated that they lack certain details, which I have included in the final drawing published here for the first time (Figure 4, shown below).

Click on image to enlarge

Another case is the drawing of the Dumbarton Oaks quartzite pectoral published in Coe (1966:figure 11). Among the details missing in his drawing is a crucial one for determining the linguistic affiliation of this text. A comparison of Coe’s drawing of the glyph at C6a, and my own drawing of that glyph (Figure 5) can show this: Coe’s drawing is missing an example of T1 7u inside T126 ya. This phonetic spelling of the preglottalic third person singular ergative/possessive prefix, 7u-ya for 7uy-, has important implications: only Cholan and Yucatecan innovated an 7uy- allomorph of this prefix in Mayan. Indeed, Tzeltalan and Greater Kanjobalan have y- but not 7uy-; other Mayan languages have r- (Greater Quichean), t- (Greater Mamean), or in- (Huastec). Using the previous drawing, such a narrow discrimination would not be possible.

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