Marvels of the Maya

December 6, 1996

The Dictionary devotes no fewer than 228 pages to "Native North American art", "Mesoamerican, pre-Columbian art,'' and "South America, pre-Columbian art''. Each subject is covered by some 76 pages on average, and yet these lengthy essays are intended only to skim the surfaces of their subjects.

Dozens more multipage entries further amplify each individual indigenous culture, its sites, architectural types, artistic styles, techniques, materials and probably much more. I must confess that between receiving the dictionary and my deadline for finishing this review, I have barely had time to imbibe the seemingly infinite riches of its 34 volumes. In any case, such escalated attention was clearly overdue. Since 1965, there has been a seismic upsurge in the public's appreciation of pre-Columbian art, not to mention the extraordinary gains in scientific knowledge during the same period about the cultures that produced it.

I am highly impressed by the credentials of the contributors and by the breadth of coverage. Both savants and aficionados will be pleased to find up-to-date entries not only on the familiar archaeological sites ("Chalcatzingo'' by David Grove, "Bonampak'' by Mary Miller, "Tenochtitlan'' by Eduardo Matos Moctezuma and Elizabeth Baquedano, "Machu Pichu'' by Ann Kendall etc.), but even on off-beat locations like "Salama Valley'' and "Chalchuapa'', reported on by roving archaeologist Robert Sharer. Search further under "Bone-carving", "Colour'', "Mirror'', "Shells'', "Stele'', "Stucco and plasterwork'', "Tomb'', and you keep discovering ever more that is new, exciting and relevant.

On the other hand, as must always happen in a work of this polymathic aspiration, perhaps depending on "too many cooks'', there are bound to be slip-ups. The most egregious is the omission of any entry on classic Mayan vase-painting, one of the most brilliant of pre-Columbian artistic (iconographic as well as the stylistic) accomplishments. The oversight is all the more conspicuous since 44 pages are given over to the decorates of classic Greek ceramics. Nothing is said here about Mayan script either, even though European, Chinese, Islamic and other nonwestern forms of calligraphy receive multipage attention. The most important of inscribed Maya codices, the Dresden Codex, from which our knowledge of Mayan calendric, astronomical, and numerical notation was derived, is left out of the index altogether.

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After the dazzling exhibition of tomb treasures from Moche Sipan making the museum rounds a few years ago, a separate entry would have been appropriate. Also, I would have liked an article on the wonderful, sometime, whimsical late-classical Jaina Island figurines, a subject about which there is scandalously little information anywhere in current scholarly literature. In his brief, surprisingly out-of-date entry on "Copan'', Paul Gendrop fails to mention the most stunning Maya discovery of this decade, the beautifully preserved, stuccoed and painted "Rosalila'' temple buried for more than 1,000 years under a king's pyramid.

Notwithstanding these few embarrassments, the Dictionary is a godsend to students of pre-Columbian art. Considering how many libraries the student must visit to dig up the same variety of study material (separately catalogued and shelved under anthropology, archaeology, art history, geography, history, linguistics and so on), one can well appreciate the time-saving value of this amazingly compacted reference work.

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Samuel Y. Edgerton is professor of art history, Williams College, Massachusetts.

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