Knorosov, but even since the 1960s tremendous advances have been made. Syllabic readings of some 150 signs have been deciphered, and the majority of logograms can also be read, in large part because they are often accompanied by “phonetic complements” that give partial phonetic clues to their reading. Most of the Maya inscriptions in stone, wood, and other media can be almost completely read in ancient Mayan and translated. Although many contain erudite references to long-lost rituals and esoteric ceremonies, they are increasingly understood with the aid of archaeological findings, ethnohistorical and ethnographical parallels, and, in some cases, knowledge of the practices of contemporary Maya.

The Maya hieroglyphs were written over almost 2,000 years. The script contains about 800 different signs, some 400 of which were in use at any one time. Of these, between one-quarter and one-third were syllabic signs, the rest being logograms. Inscriptions were generally arranged in a system of double columns, in which the material would be read from left to right and top to bottom within two columns of text, before proceeding to the next two columns on the right. The script is written predominantly in one language (called Eastern Cholan), which is most closely related to a subgroup of Mayan languages still spoken across the base of the Yucatán Peninsula. The script was later adopted and used for inscriptions in at least one other language (Yucatec Mayan, still spoken in the northern half of the peninsula).

Most of the surviving Maya inscriptions are historical in general content, although they also contain a wealth of information on sociopolitical and geopolitical structure as well as details of ceremonies and rituals. Four Maya bark-paper books survive; they deal principally with astronomical and astrological matters. Various sixteenth-century commentators said the script was used to record information on history, genealogy, prophecy, maps, trade and tribute, astronomy, astrology, ritual and religious ceremonies, mythology, songs and poetry, and disease and medicine. Most of these topics are at least touched upon in the corpus of Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions that survives as testimony to the wonderful achievements of this ancient American civilization.

Peter Mathews

References

Coe, M. 1992. Breaking the Maya Code. London: Thames and Hudson.

McBurney, Charles

(1914–1979)

Charles McBurney was a distinguished Paleolithic archaeologist who spent his entire professional career at Cambridge University, apart from his war service in North Africa—an experience that led him to return to Libya, where he did much of his fieldwork.

McBurney was born in the United States and lived in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He was privately educated in Europe before going to Cambridge in 1933, where he studied under dorothy garrod, Miles Burkitt, and grahame clark. After graduating he began a doctoral dissertation on the Lower Paleolithic of Europe, embracing the major geographic study of the distribution of the Acheulean or hand-axe industries. The principal conclusions of this work were published in 1950.

World War II shaped much of McBurney’s career. After its conclusion he returned to Cyrenaica, in Libya, to work with the geologist Richard Hey, and he discovered numbers of Mousterian, Aterian, and Upper Paleolithic sites. Henceforth, his interests were firmly fixed on this period, covering the last 150,000 years, although he remained highly conversant with problems of the Lower Paleolithic. In Cyrenaica McBurney first excavated the open site of Hajj Creiem and the cave of Hagfet et Dabba, where he found a new industry that he named the Dabban. Then, in 1948, he found the great cave that most attracted his attention: the haua fteah near the coast in northern Cyrenaica. This vast sinkhole, 60 meters in diameter, was large enough to contain the whole camp. Excavations proceeded to a depth of 13 meters. The Haua Fteah became one of two very major pieces of fieldwork in McBurney’s career, and it presented a classic archaeological sequence through the last glaciation. Its publication in monograph form in 1967 was a signal achievement. The site