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Maya bones bring a lost civilization to life

Trained in both medicine and archaeology, Vera Tiesler has revealed how the human body was deeply woven into the religion, tradition and politics of the Maya world.
By
  1. Erik Vance

    1. Erik Vance is a science journalist in Baltimore, Maryland.

The Autonomous University of the Yucatán, in the Mexican city of Mérida, holds one of the most comprehensive libraries on Earth. But few books line the shelves on the bottom floor of the anthropological sciences building. Instead, boxes are stacked from floor to ceiling in almost every corner of the laboratory, with labels naming Calakmul, Pomuch or Xcambo and other ancient Maya ruins. Inside every box is a set of human bones.

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Nature 566, 168-171 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00517-y

References

  1. Tiesler, V. The Bioarchaeology of Artificial Cranial Modifications: New Approaches to Head Shaping and its Meanings in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and Beyond Chapter 10, 239–256 (Springer, 2014).

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  2. Tiesler, V. Child. Past 4, 117–132 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Tiesler, V. & Cucina, A. (eds) Janaab’ Pakal of Palenque: Reconstructing the Life and Death of a Maya Ruler (Univ. Arizona Press, 2006).

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  4. Tiesler, V., Cucina, A., Stanton, T. W. & Freidel, D. A. Before Kukulkán: Bioarchaeology of Maya Life, Death, and Identity at Classic Period Yaxuná (Univ. Arizona Press, 2017).

    Google Scholar 

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