ABSTRACT
As one of the founding stones of Maya archaeology, ceramic studies have a long and illustrious history. In this chapter, I will examine the roots of Maya ceramic analysis and its trajectory over the last century. However, the focus will be on the most recent studies, their approaches, and future directions of analysis. Maya pottery was first seen as the key to the reconstruction of the cultural history of this Mesoamerican civilization, so types, varieties, complexes, and phases became the parlance in the first half of the twentieth century. The polychrome vessels of the Classic period painted with elaborate scenes involving humans, animals, deities, and hieroglyphs had continuously attracted the eye of collectors, but also art historians who began deciphering their iconography and texts. Maya ceramic studies have flourished in the last decades as interdisciplinary research among art historians, archaeologists, ceramicists, chemists, geologists, and physicists has come to bear fruit. Pottery has been viewed not only as a chronological tool, but also as the masterpieces of individual scribes, as goods in a flourishing economic system, as political currency or control devices, and so on.
