Linda and David Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing, Ph.D.

Mesoamerican Art, Archaeology and Epigraphy

Department of Art & Art History

davidstuart@mail.utexas.edu

- Office: DFA 2.112

- Phone: +1 512-232-2363

- Mail Code: - D1300

In 2004 David Stuart was appointed as the Linda and David Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing.  His interests in the traditional cultures of Mesoamerica are wide-ranging, but his primary research focuses is the archaeology and epigraphy of ancient Maya civilization. His early work on the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs led to a MacArthur Fellowship in 1984.  He received his Ph.D in Anthropology from Vanderbilt University in 1995, and taught at Harvard University for eleven years before arriving at UT Austin.  Stuart has conducted field research at numerous archaeological sites in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, and remains actively engaged in several large-scale excavation projects in the Maya area. His publications include Ten Phonetic Syllables (1987), which laid much of the groundwork for the now-accepted methodology of decipherment. In 2003 he published a volume ongoing series Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, devoted to drawings and photographs of sculpture from Piedras Negras, Guatemala.  Stuart is also the Director of The Mesoamerica Center at the University of Texas at Austin (formerly CHAAAC), which fosters multi-disciplinary studies and produces publications on ancient American art and culture.