Corpus Volume 20 presents twenty stelae, three altars, and a Temple IV wooden lintel, all currently housed in the Lithics Museum. The building is adjacent to the Tikal visitor center and contains some of Tikal’s most important monuments, removed from the site to be preserved and protected inside the building.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
Corpus Volume 19 is a departure from previous corpora, highlighting glyphs on ceramics rather than on stone. We hope you will enjoy seeing some familiar, or not so familiar, objects in a new way. The pieces in this set were photographed in their display cases at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and shared with permission from LACMA.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
Corpus Volume 19: Classic Maya Ceramics with Glyphs at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Research Contribution 17 presents five “contortionists” from Tabasco, Mexico: one in the Pellicer museum in Villahermosa, one in a small municipal museum in Tenosique, and three in the Pomoná site museum. This contribution was produced in collaboration with Miguel García Mollinedo, who helped throughout the process and wrote the introduction to the monuments published here.
-Bruce Love
Research Contribution 17: Five Contortionists from Tabasco, Mexico
The Hombre de Tikal is a masterpiece first published by Federico Fahsen in 1988. In Corpus Volume 18, we share photographs taken in 2025 of this seated stone figure that document the intricate glyphs carved into the surface of this sculpture.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
Our most recent addition to Contributions to Mesoamerican Studies is the English translation of El Verdadero Significado de Oxchuc en Glifos de la Cultural Maya by Martín Gómez Ramírez (Maya Tseltal). We hope you enjoy this valuable Research Contribution.
-Bruce Love
Research Contribution 16: The True Meaning of Oxchuc in Mayan Cultural Glyphs, Martín Gómez Ramírez
Research Contribution 15, The Paris Codex Index, is a nearly 300-page document that organizes the 203 unique glyphs from the Paris Codex into an easy-to-reference format. This resource, assembled by Clio Reichart and Bruce Love, should prove useful to Maya epigraphers for years to come.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
Research Contribution 15: The Paris Codex Index, Clio Reichart, Uguku Usdi, and Bruce Love
Corpus Volume 17 includes photographs and drawings of 27 monuments from Dzibanché, Quintana Roo, Mexico. The introductions, written by Bruce Love and Dzibanché Project Director Sandra Balanzario, summarize their documentation process and place the site of Dzibanché in its historical context.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
Corpus Volume 17: Monuments of Dzibanché, Quintana Roo, Mexico
Corpus Volume 16 presents a single monument in two parts. The lower half of Stela 1 from Cancuen is in a school room in Cobán, Alta Verapaz, and the upper half is in a school courtyard in Santa Elena, Petén. This publication photographically reunites them. The photos, by Bruce Love, were taken in March and April of this year.
-Bruce Love and Meghan Rubenstein
Corpus Volume 16: Cancuen Stela 1: Cobán, Alta Verapaz, and Santa Elena, Peten, Guatemala
According to archaeologists José Francisco Osorio and Francisco Pérez, La Mesa de los Cautivos, as it is now known, was first exposed during clearing of interior rubble in the Templo de los Caracoles building (Structure 5C5; Temple of the Snails) in 2005 during work at the Initial Series Group at Chichén Itzá under the direction of Dr. Peter Schmidt, but only the top surface was seen and the sides were not cleared. At that time, it was identified as a banqueta (bench).
In 2019 it was further exposed by the Proyecto Arqueológico Chichén Itzá, then headed by Osorio, and was discovered to have four carved sides. News of its discovery was published in Mexicon in 2020 (Vol. XLII February). Bruce Love photographed it on March 25, 2021, with permission of then site director Eduardo López Calzada, when Love was working at the site in collaboration with the project La Pintura Mural Prehispánica en México under the directorship of María Teresa Uriarte Castañeda of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas UNAM. Love made the drawings the following month.
Love’s photographs and drawings were published in Arqueología Mexicana (at a small scale) in no. 172, enero-febrero 2022, in an article by project directors José Francisco Osorio and Francisco Pérez, and the figures with glyphs were added to Love’s Catalog of Non-Maya Glyphs at Chichén Itzá, also in 2022.
Photos and drawings of the four carved sides of the “table top” are published here with the consent of (now) site director José Francisco Osorio to whom I am deeply grateful for his collaboration.
-Bruce Love
Corpus Volume 15: La Mesa de los Cautivos from Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, Mexico
With the help of Bernie Mittelstaedt, I photographed the monuments of La Florida over two nights on April 9-10, 2019. Joanne Baron, considered today’s expert on the site and its monuments, had already been working at the site for some time, but my own work there was not part of her project. I had contacted her about my intentions, and she gave me the green light. However, any arrangements to photograph would have to be made by me and Bernie after we arrived there.
We had just come from La Libertad where, three years prior, again thanks to Bernie’s incredible diplomatic skills, we had gotten permission to photograph pieces in the municipality (Corpus Volume 7: Itzimte Stelae at La Libertad, Petén, Guatemala). I returned this year, 2019, to present La Libertad alcalde Benjamin Ipiña printed photographs of the monuments suitable for hanging. He was very appreciative. When Bernie mentioned our intention to go to the site of La Florida in the town of El Naranjo, the alcalde made a call for us and paved the way.
Arriving in El Naranjo around midday we went first to see the alcalde, to tell him our intentions and to get his blessings. Later in the evening, Bernie arranged for us to enter the military base where many of the monuments were located. The site itself is scattered throughout the town and the military base, with one of the main archaeological plazas now serving as a soccer field, a soccer field with monuments on the edges.
Now, some four years later, I am happy to present to you, our readers, this collection of photographs.
-Bruce Love
Corpus Volume 14: Monuments from La Florida Namaan, Petén, Guatemala
Contributions to Mesoamerican Studies 