Uaxactun Research Paper

Uaxactun is a sacred place of the ancient mayan people. Located in northern guatemala it was first explored by American archaeologists in 1916. The excavations at the temple pyramids of Uaxactun significantly furthered our understanding of ancient mayan civilization. The scholarly article Multispectral imaging of an Early Classic Maya codex fragment from Uaxactun, Guatemala by Nicholas P. Carter & Jeffrey Dobereiner outlines the process of analyzing small fragments of a codex from an ancient Uaxactun temple made of plaster coated bark dated back to 400-600 AD. Using the process of multispectral imaging, which is to capture an image and analyze it at specific frequencies across the electromagnetic spectrum, archaeologists were able to detect not only paintings and writings, but they found a second hidden layer of writings that had been resurfaced and repainted over in ancient times. There has never been any other findings like these codex fragments in Maya history and it sheds light on their literary habits. The most important observation Carter & Dobereiner make is that these small fragments are the earliest bark paper manuscripts to be found “pointing to a thousand years or more of technical continuity in Maya bookmaking”. The evidence of …show more content…
This discovery in large part possible because of modern science; by enabling us to look at the electromagnetic spectrum of lights given off of this fragment of paper we were able to determine there was an original writing that was written over at some point in the past. This is significant because it gives insight into the Mayan traditions of bookkeeping and record holding. This revision of texts hints at the possibility that ancient historical texts were modified for political reasons. In this the ancient indigenous people of the Americas differ from classic untamed savage stereotype, and in some ways are similar to europeans of the