ABSTRACT
The personhood of Classic Maya and New Kingdom Egyptian subjects has not been irretrievably lost; it continues to persist today in the form of material extensions that are part of the basis for our examination of personhood in these ancient societies. Commemoration of the person is epitomized by Classic Maya monuments with inscriptions using a calendar system that allows precise designation of dates of events in a single, continuous, framework. The primary communicative effect of such texts, beyond the incidents of biography and history that they relate, is the performance of memory. Ancient Egyptian and Mayan materials are evocative fragments of past life to think through our own cultural contexts, to understand the importance of our different legacies and refigure our own taxonomies and experiences with the recognition of cultural difference firmly in mind. Archaeological accounts can in many ways parallel ethnographic/sociological inquiries, particularly given their rich material, iconographic and textual sources.
