Introduction to the Corpus

This can be stated quite briefly. First, as to the media in which Maya texts are preserved, all of them except codices and pottery vessels are taken to fall within the purview of the Corpus. Thus, inscriptions on jade, shell, bone, wood, stucco, and painted walls will be covered, in addition to those carved in stone, which form the largest category.

Second, no precise geographical limits have been set; any object that carries writing of predominantly Maya character comes within the scope of the Corpus.

Third, where hieroglyphs are accompanied by representational art, or accompany it, the entire design will be recorded. In a very few cases an object that bears no inscription will be included: one member of a set of lintels, for example, when other members of the set do carry inscriptions.

We do not propose to offer any commentary on the inscriptions, since to embark on even the barest analysis would seriously hold back progress of fieldwork and publication. Other factors weighed in this decision have been the increase in bulk and in price that a commentary would impose on these volumes, and the reflection that a large proportion of this additional matter inevitably would grow obsolete and  become an encumbrance in a still vital work of reference.

It is not our intention, either, to include within these volumes any account of the minor excavations that are occasionally necessary in recording a monument, nor will there be notes on architecture or sherd collections gathered during our work at the various sites. These will appear in another place.

1. It is recommended that those who have opted for loose-leaf usage keep a separate binder for the tables of contents and indexes of all volumes and the most recently issued list of site-codes. If a volume-and-page reference is to be looked up, it will be simple to identify the site and object from the tables of contents and then to find the page in whichever binder the material from that site has been assembled.

At Chichen Itza, the majority of inscriptions are designated by descriptive names-Casa Colora­da, Temple of the Four Lintels, etc. - and in varying degrees the same is true of some other sites. These do not fall into any natural order, as do monuments at sites where only stelae and altars are to be found, all in numbered series. If, then, we are to avoid confusion and waste of time in searching for a particular page, a filing order must be established for the monuments of every site. This is provided by the Register of Inscriptions that comes at the end of the introductory matter for each site.

2. In choosing between alternative names or spellings, preference has usually been given to the more commonly accepted form, rather than versions that might be pedantically correct. Thus, Seibal with an s is retained, as established in the literature too firmly for change at this late date. In any case, by the rules of Spanish orthography this spelling ought not to be objectionable for a word of Caribbean origin, and it is in fact employed in the place names Seiba Mocha, Cuba, and Seiba Playa, Yucatan.

Accents have been omitted from all Maya place names. In many of these names h has been retained for aspirates rather than the more guttural Spanish jota, unless well-established usage dictates otherwise, as in Kaminaljuyu. The only substantial change concerns the site previously known as Yaltitud. This mistakenly Hispanicized version has been discarded in favor of Yaltutu, a name that can be found for several localities in Peten (apparently it refers to an abundance of freshwater shellfish at those places).

In the designation of glyph-blocks some difficulties arise. One of them is presented by fragmentary sculpture in which the beginning of the text is missing: the normal scheme of letters and numbers cannot be applied, starting from the first surviving glyph, because subsequent discovery of another fragment is likely to make necessary an entirely new designation, and this is at all costs to be avoided. The policy to be followed in the Corpus for fragmentary texts of this kind that do not already have an established designation will be to add the letter p (for provisional) as a prefix to each column-letter or row-number, if the possibility exists of preceding columns or rows having been lost. Thus, on a fragment that lacks its original left-hand edge, the numbering will begin with pA1, pB1, etc. If there is doubt only about the original number of rows, as with a full-width lower fragment of an all-glyphic panel, the p will precede the number only, in this fashion: Ap1, Bp1, etc. By this notation the provisional nature of the designation is made clear.

If a revised, but still provisional, glyph-block designation is called for upon the discovery of a further fragment which still does not supply the beginning of the text, it can be distinguished by the use of the letter q, instead of p.

Another difficulty lies in the implication that an alphabetic and numerical series indicates the correct order of reading. Indeed, more often than not it does. Morley's very serviceable usage was to look for the opening date, begin the lettering with the column in which this statement commenced, and proceed from left to right. However, an isolated panel of glyphs may be a source of difficulty. Sometimes it can be recognized as a continuation of a column that has merely been interrupted by some nonhieroglyphic element of design; in other cases it clearly does not form part of the main text, but could be a caption relating to an ancillary figure or some other kind of subsidiary matter.

To provide for this situation, a scheme has been devised by Linton Satterthwaite, which is being applied where necessary to monuments at Tikal. The main text receives the conventional designa­tion. Subsidiary panels or groups are identified by letters from the end of the alphabet, and glyphs within them are designated in the ordinary way, except that the column-letters A, B, C, etc., are prefixed with the letter given to that group, in lower case. An illustration is provided by Altar 5 at Tikal. Two groups not labeled by Morley (a row and a panel) lie within the encircling glyphic band. These are now designated Panel Y and Panel Z, respectively, and they contain the glyph-blocks yA1-yA4, and zA1, zA2.

Well-conceived though this system of nomenclature clearly is, the compilers of the Corpus have decided not to adopt it when it falls to them to label glyph-blocks. The additional complexity, and the danger of erroneously incorporating a group into, or divorcing it from, the main text seem to us to outweigh the advantages. Nevertheless, designations will be applied in such a way that they correspond as far as possible with the apparent order of reading. Users of the Corpus are urged to regard these designations in the first instance as mere locus-indicators of the blocks in illustrations and then, in each particular case, to decide whether--or to what extent--they are valid guides to the order of reading the contents of the blocks.

Unfortunately, codes conforming with any uniform system of site designation (Rowe 1971) could not be employed, principally because the only justification for the codes in this context--their brevity--would be lost, and also because in many cases insufficient geographical data are available. The codes devised here have the great advantage of being derived from the common names of sites, and so are usually easy to recognize. There are a few instances in which "unnatural" code letters have had to be chosen to avoid confusion among similar site names. However, one ambiguous code, YAX, has been allowed to stand for Yaxchilan, in spite of the possibility of mistaking it for Yaxha, on the grounds that the great volume and importance of the sculpture at Yaxchilan justifies the choice for it of the most obvious code.

4. The various techniques and problems of photography will not be discussed here, chiefly because they are not static but evolve from one year to the next. Indeed, I will take the opportunity to express my hope that an improvement will be noticed in the quality of photographs from volume 3 onward, compared with those taken by me for volume 2; if so, this can be attributed to a change in lighting technique. A discussion of the whole subject is contemplated for publication elsewhere. For the moment it should be enough to state that photographs are generally taken by artificial light, arranged to fall from various directions in successive exposures, the lens axis always being kept perpendicular to the sculptured surlace.

About the technique of drawing there is perhaps less that can be said, and there is little to be expected in the way of technical developments during the progress of the Corpus. But there are comments to make that do have some bearing upon the interpretation of these drawings.

Our drawings are made on Mylar polyester film and are based on tracings from photographs printed at the scale of 1:4 (or larger, when the drawing is to be reproduced at a scale greater than 1:10). For details to be incorporated in the rendering, heavy reliance is placed on pencil drawings that have been made in the presence of the original; these field drawings are always checked over at night with electric light arranged to fall on the stone at raking angles and from various directions in turn, so as to bring up the faintest remains of relief. Figure 1 is presented here to show how different features of a carved surface are revealed by lighting from different directions; also to point up the need to insure a strictly frontal camera position so as to avoid distortion.

Apart from field drawings and photographs, other resources that may be utilized in the rendering include plastercasts, these being especially valuable in the case of a lintel in situ or a sculpture having a curved surface (e.g., Naranjo Stela 35), and old photographs that may show sculptural detail or even whole fragments now lost.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways of representing relief with pen or pencil on paper. One technique aims at lifelike effect, simulating the texture of stone and the play of light upon it by skillful use of stipple or hachure; the other is a line drawing that does not pretend to be more than schematic, suggesting neither plasticity and tactile value nor illumination from any particular direction. This is the technique adopted for the present work. Besides demanding less artistic talent, the line drawing has the advantage of being able to convey more information in a given area. This is important because in the corpus of Maya sculpture there are pieces so finely carved as to make realistic rendering at a much reduced scale impracticable, if detail is not to be lost. Even in a line drawing, there is difficulty with crosshatched areas in which the lines may be spaced less than two millimeters apart on the original or half a millimeter at drafting scale, and one fifth of a millimeter at reproduction scale.

In the common sort of Maya bas-relief, the convention appears to be that figures stand against a featureless wall, or a clear sky, this being represented by a recessed surface. The background of hieroglyphs, although they maybe ona raised panel or isolated in a frame, is likewise plain. Where a glyph is pierced with an opening, this is recessed to the general background level. Thus, a line drawing can be rendered more intelligible if the background is shown stippled. In the Corpus the density of stippling is meant to indicate the probability that no feature was ever carved in that area. For example, if in the area surrounding a headdress part of the plain background has been badly pitted, a less dense stippling will be applied there, as the former existence of some detail, such as a pair of incised glyphs or a feather, cannot be ruled out entirely. Additionally, it is a useful feature of the stippled background that it can be made to show the eroded outline of a glyph or other element with any degree of vagueness desired.

Occasionally, difficulties are met with in the application of stippling. The commonest and most serious doubt arises over small recessed areas: do they represent holes in the object portrayed or merely recessed features in it? Where there is uncertainty the stippling is best left out, and the area can be shown as recessed in the following manner: a close look at any stippled background in this work will show that the line enclosing it, which represents a projecting rim of relief, is strengthened with closely spaced dots along the low, or stippled, side. Equally, in the absence of stippling, a similar row of dots touching a line on one side signifies that on that side the surface recedes. This notation, however, will be employed only where doubt is likely to arise over the interpretation of a passage.

As far as possible, the stylistic character of the original is preserved in the line drawing, a conscious effort having been made to suppress any tendency to smooth out erratic curves or eliminate other signs of poor workmanship. However, line drawings are deficient in one important respect, for they do not convey the particular quality of roundness, or lack of it, in the relief. To give an example, the cross section of the cartouche or rim of a glyph is often as demonstrated in figure 2. Certain sculptors, however, rejecting the use of an incised inner line, worked the stone with evident care into another cross section (figure 3). Differentiating between these two in a drawing at small scale whatever the technique of drawing, would be a test of skill for any draftsman, but in a line drawing the task is plainly impossible. Therefore, information about the quality of relief has to be sought in the photographs (see also note 5).

To represent a line whose course or even existence is uncertain we use a dotted line, with the degree of uncertainty expressed by the spacing of the dots. Solid lines are used only for features about whose form there is no doubt. On the face of it, this is a simple enough principle; but one that can scarcely be maintained rigorously. The draftsman (to his dismay) is repeatedly confronted by evidence of his own overconfidence, the most chastening experience being to finish drawing a rather well-preserved sculpture and then discover an early photograph showing the piece in pristine condition. Many a solid line is found to have minor, but possibly significant, defects.

In order to distinguish between lines that come to a definite end and others that are interrupted by erosion or breakage, the latter are terminated in the drawing by a dot, which may not be noticeable without the use of a magnifying glass.

A minor problem in representing relief sculpture by line drawings is presented by the displacement of lines that erosion can cause. While it would be pretentious to claim that lines are drawn to correspond with any precisely determined point on the shoulder of the relief, it may be said that the point is about halfway up the slope, or a little more. Erosion can cause displacement in either direction. If the raised areas have been preferentially eroded, leaving the recessed background unaffected--this may be the result of flaking or other processes not understood; Naranjo Stela 23 provides a good example--then the foot of the relief will remain perfectly clear, justifying even a solid line in the drawing; but this line will have been displaced outwards (b in figure 4). In contrast, the acid decomposition products of mosses and humus attack stone more evenly, with a consequent shift inwards of the apparent line (c in figure 4). In consequence, a lone feather or other narrow element will show quite distinctly, but it will have suffered considerable attenuation. Perhaps even more noticeable is the gap that develops between elements such as a glyphic mainsign and affixes that once made contact with it.

Dots, represented by drilled holes in sculpture, are a common element in Maya designs and in weathered stone are easily confused with erosion pits. Undoubted dots, then, are represented in these drawings by heavy spots, and doubtful ones by three small dots, whereas a circlet of uncertain authenticity is represented by five or more dots in a circle. An effort is made always to depict the correct number of dots or beads in figurative art and in hieroglyphic affixes such as T-32 or T-36. The number of lines, however, in a crosshatched area is not so carefully reproduced, as being less likely to have significance.

5. Glyphs carved in a fine-grained stone, with interior detail lightly carved or incised, weather down to fairly clear outlines enclosing totally blank interiors. These present no problem of representation. The difficult case is the glyph deeply carved in a stone of coarse and uneven composition. Here, if a significant element is to be recognized among the lumps and hollows largely caused by erosion, that glyph must almost have been expected for that position in the text. Glyph combinations such as Emblem Glyphs, Imix-comb-Imix glyphs, and members of known clauses can often be spotted when neighboring glyphs no worse eroded have to be shown blank in the drawing. In such cases the better prepared epigrapher of the future is likely to feel betrayed by the publication of only a single photograph and a line drawing.

The solution seems to lie in three-dimensional photography. In the first fascicle to be issued, volume 2, part 1, stereophotographs are supplied only for the glyph-panels on the front of Stelae 22 and 23 from Naranjo, but in later volumes they will be more liberally provided. These stereophoto­ graphs are meant to be examined with the standard pocket viewer manufactured for use with aerial photographs.

It has been suggested that if stereophotographs are to be taken, then the further step ought to be made up to full photogrammetry. This seems to me a doubtful proposition: the cost of stereo-plotting is very great, and it is not clear in the present context what benefits the technique has to offer--even though claims have been made for it in connection with a problem not encountered in Maya sculpture, the separation of palimpsest inscriptions (Silva and Fernando 1971).

6. Determining the latitude and longitude of ruins in the forest by means of transit and chronometer, as was attempted on Carnegie Institution expeditions in the 1920s and 1930s, is attended with certain difficulties. In those days a source of serious error lay in the chronometer, but this has now been almost eliminated: wristwatches of previously unattainable accuracy are available, and they can be set by time signals received over a portable radio. But another impediment remains. The altitude of the Pole Star is so low in the latitudes of Maya sites that observations are possible only if quite a long clearing exists, extending north and south, or if there is a tall pyramid cleared of trees round the top. In the course of a season's formal excavation at a site, one can sometimes arrange without too much difficulty for one of these conditions to be met, but clearing trees is seldom possible during a visit made for the sole purpose of recording sculpture.

Another method has therefore to be used. Generally the only one that is feasible is to make a ground traverse from a known station, and to correlate the plot later with stereoscopic aerial photographs. Along the trail, compass readings to the nearest five degrees are taken every minute, together with notes of prominent natural features: swamps, escarpments, streams, etc. Traverses recorded on the outward journey can be helpful in navigating towards a particular goal, but they are likely to be less accurate than those taken on the way back, owing to the repeated interruptions of pace that occur when obstructions are met and are cleared away by machete work.

After the traverse has been plotted to a scale close to that of the aerial photographs, it will have to be bent a little and stretched here and there so that the streams crossed and escarpments skirted seem to correspond with features seen in the aerial photographs. Then the ruins themselves can usually be pinpointed. The practiced eye is often aided in recognizing ruins by the look of the vegetation around them: the dark patches of breadnut trees (ramón), and on the tops of high mounds the pale glistening of fig trees.

The technique has been found quite successful in Peten, failing only in karst terrain where there are scarcely any features other than hills, and these quite indistinguishable in their abundance, either on the ground or in stereoscopic aerial view.