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the Austrian Archaeological Institute, honorary member of the Society of Antiquaries, and correspondent member of the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences.
At first, Šašel’s research focused on the archaeology of major Roman towns in slovenia (Ljubljana, Ptuj, and Celje), but later he was more interested in Roman epigraphy. His numerous works include studies in epigraphy (writing/inscriptions), prosopography, ancient history, Roman military history, the ancient economy, and the historical topography of northeastern italy and the Roman provinces in the Balkans (Pannonia, Noricum, Dalmatia, Moesia). Together with his wife, Ana Šašel, he published the supplement to the Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum in three volumes (1963, 1978, and 1986). In his onomastic studies, he analyzed the structure and distribution of some Roman family names, and together with colleague P. Petru, he initiated research on the late Roman limes on the northeastern border of Italy.
Šašel also contributed to the Tabula Imperii Romani (1976), Pauli-Wissowa Real Encyklopadie der klassischen Altertums-Wissenschaft, Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (1976), Der drosse Plotz (1980), and the archaeological map of Slovenia (Arheoloska najdisca Slovenije), in which he published a synthesis on Roman roads. He was also the editor of numerous Slovenian and Yugoslav archaeological journals and publications.
References
Šašel J. 1989. “Opera selecta.” Situla (Ljubljana) 30. Reprint of his most important studies.
(1942–1998)
One of the greatest Mayanist scholars of the late twentieth century, Linda Schele began her academic career as a studio art teacher. A tourist trip to Yucatán with her husband, David, changed her life. She was fascinated by the amazing ruins that she saw and the beauty of Maya art, and she resolved to learn more about them.
In the early 1970s Schele began to study Mayan hieroglyphic writing. By this time the basic structure and some of the content of Maya inscriptions were understood, but more precise details were still unclear. Over the following quarter century that situation was to change, and Schele was at the forefront of efforts aimed at “breaking the Maya code,” as one scholar has put it.
In 1973 Schele attended the first round table conference at palenque in mexico. At this, her initial professional conference, she and colleague Peter Mathews presented a proposed king-list (chronology of rulers deciphered from Maya inscriptions) of Palenque. Over the following fifteen years she worked not only on the inscriptions of Palenque but also on those of other classic Maya sites. In the studies she conducted during these years, she was indefatigable in her attempts to evaluate the archaeological sequence in conjunction with the epigraphic history of individual sites—an approach that has paid huge dividends. At Copán, Honduras, she worked with a number of other epigraphers and archaeologists conducting excavations in and around that site, and the result was a detailed synthesis of the archaeology, architectural sequence, and history of Copán, which is now one of the best understood of all classic Maya centers.
By the early 1980s Schele was a recognized leader in the field of Maya studies. She and a colleague from Yale University, Mary Miller, were asked to prepare a major exhibition of Maya art and to write the descriptive catalog to accompany it. The exhibition, called “The Blood of Kings,” was a tour de force. For the first time masterpieces of Maya art from collections in both Europe and North America were exhibited together. The accompanying catalog was much more than a series of descriptive paragraphs about individual objects, preceded by a brief introduction: in addition to describing the exhibition pieces in detail, the book also contained essays by Schele and Miller on several great themes in Maya art, ranging from kingship to warfare to bloodletting. These essays were major statements on various aspects of elite life among the classic Maya, and The Blood of Kings
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