Ancient Mesoamerica is one of just a few places to have independently invented lime-plaster technology. This outstanding material led to a rich tradition of stucco sculptures and architectural wall paintings among the various Mesoamerican cultures. In this talk, Heather Hurst will focus on the ancient Maya murals of San Bartolo, Guatemala. The San Bartolo murals are remarkable for their depiction of local origin mythology at the time of the first Maya kings and queens, as well as their corpus of hieroglyphic texts that are the earliest writing and calendrics yet discovered in the Maya lowlands dating to 300 – 100 BCE. However, the discovery of San Bartolo’s buried, painted chambers is only half the story. While some walls of the temples were found in situ, others were intentionally broken and interred by the Maya as part of ritual termination events. The San Bartolo pyramid known as Las Pinturas has yielded nearly 7000 fragments of mural painting collected during archaeological excavations. In this presentation, Hurst will share the 10-year effort to re-assemble the murals from the primary chamber and recent results in solving this challenging puzzle.
All events can be accessed via the zoom webinar link that was emailed to the address used to purchase your ArchaeoCon ticket.
