The art of the ancient Maya constitutes one of
the great styles of pre-Columbian America. These people, whose civilization
rose to such eminence, inhabited a vast territory which included all of the Yucatan
Peninsula, Guatemala and British Honduras, the astern portion of Chiapas and
Tabasco (in Mexico), and the western borderland of Honduras and El Salvador.
Although the Maya persisted as a cultural group from 1500 B.C. until the time
of the Spanish conquest, it is the stone sculpture of the Lowland Maya with
which the book is mainly concerned. This segment of Maya society reached its florescence
during the Classic period, 300 to 900 A.D., at the end of which the civilization
collapsed. During this period of time, the Lowland Maya built hundreds of
ceremonial centers across a network of land, river and sea routes. Mystery
surrounds the handsomely carved stelae of Piedras Negras, Yaxhilan and Copan,
the sensitive bas-relief tablets of Palenque, the enormous monuments of the
Pasion drainage, and the intricately carved lintel of Tikal which are all
included in this book. Sculpture of the Highland Maya and their non-Maya
neighbors from the Pacific Piedmont of Guatemala is also included. Maya
sculpture shows strict conformance to hieratic symbolism. The precise way in
which the figures and their accoutrements are spatially apportioned is
described according to region and chronological period. The book includes photographs
of rubbings from 45 of these ancient ceremonial centers. Most of the rubbings
were made by Merle Greene (one of the authors) in the field.
Merle Greene Robertson (1913 – 2011) was an American artist, art historian, archaeologist, lecturer and Mayanist researcher, renowned for her extensive work towards the investigation and preservation of the art, iconography, and writing of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Central America. She is most famous for her rubbings of Maya carved stelae, sculpture, and carved stone, particularly at the Maya sites of Tikal and Palenque. Greene [Robertson] pioneered the technique of taking rubbings from Maya monumental sculptures and inscriptions, making over 4,000 of these over a career spanning four decades (2,000 being monuments). In many cases these rubbings have preserved features of the artworks which have since deteriorated or even disappeared, through the actions of the environment or looters.
Robert L. Rands (1922 – 2010) is famous for his study of pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories. These are speculative theories which propose that possible visits to the Americas, possible interactions with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas—or both—were made by people from Africa, Asia, Europe, or Oceania prior to Christopher Columbus's first landing.
John A. Graham is a Professor of Anthropology at U.C. Berkeley California where he teaches Mesoamerican cultural history, particularly Maya and Olmec archaeology and art, Maya epigraphy, and the history of archaeology