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Mayan Vases in Lists by Topic

Documents here are copyright © 2008 by Lloyd Anderson but may be freely used as long as they are properly cited and this introduction is included with them. This general permission is permanent; it will not be altered in the future.

Latest changes:
(20 Feb. 2009) Added a listing of publications on Alta Verapaz, drawn from the FAMSI bibliography, here.
      Relevant to the Maya Weekend, Philadelphia, and to studies of Chamá and Nebaj ceramics.
(20 Feb. 2009) Courtesy of Justin Kerr, an Excel listing of the Kerr numbers of 312 Codex-style vases, here.
     Such vases were probably produced in Calakmul and related sites, as well as in the Mirador basin. (See also the group of "Dynasty Pots" below.)
     Additional info is included, but not yet labeled for use. The Excel sheet has many columns, you may have to use left arrows to reach the first column.

For a number of articles on various vases available on Justin Kerr's www.Mayavase.com web site, please click here.

The lists by topic which you can click on below are an alternate way to access the corpus of Mayan vases brought together by Justin Kerr in his database (see www.FAMSI.org). You can search his database by keywords. The lists below group together vases whose entire scenes are the same or most closely related, much as was done in the Book of the Dead. Each method has its advantages. The lists here are more useful when a set of motifs usually occur together in clusters rather than independently of each other. Single vases are here sometimes listed under more than one category in order to make finding them much easier, or rarely there are cross-references..

Two small essays are included at this time, which you can access by clicking on "Baby Jaguar" or on "Skyband or Roofband" in the table below. A very few differences from Kerr's keyword listings are also noted there. A bibliography of essays which focus on vases will be added.

These lists already include a few vases which Kerr has added to the database since the publication of vol.6. These additions will be completed later.
Not yet included are the majority of vases where the primary interest is on glyphs or on the transition to pseudoglyphs. Also not yet included are some carved or incised vases. For vases which are included, information on types of glyphs and pseudo-glyphs is not yet completely systematic, but is partly reliable. "Pseudoglyphs" is here used to refer to glyph-like forms which were probably not intended to communicate words of a language, but only to give a general atmosphere or perhaps to invoke a vanishing or vanished tradition. Repetition of the same glyph multiple times is a good indicator that we are not dealing with normal glyphic text. A blank in the column for glyphic text almost always means there are no glyphs on the vase, and is equivalent to the double dash "--". It appears to be the case that the PSS (Primary Standard Sequence, usually a text around the rim of a vase) was more or less accurately reproduced, at least in part, on many vases where other texts placed within the scene below have become pseudo-glyphs. This would be consistent with artists being able to reproduce the most common formulas of the writing system even when glyphic writing was otherwise nearly abandoned.

Credits for work by others: This list began several years ago as a sorting into groups of the images from Kerr's corpus of Maya vases. It was nudged an extra step by the list of vases relevant to mythological narratives compiled by Marc Zender for his workshop at the 2007 WAYEB meetings in Geneva, with contributions by Alex Tokovinine. Justin Kerr and Dorie Budet helped the author to create an up-to-date concordance from Kerr numbers to locations where images are published. The generosity of all is greatly appreciated. To make this list of maximum value to all in the field, please send suggestions for additions and corrections to ecoling {at] aol {dot] com.

Documents accessed from this page are copyright © 2008 by Lloyd Anderson. All Rights Reserved with the following exception: they may be freely used as long as they are properly cited and this page and its copyright notice are retained together with them.