Institute of Maya Studies

“The Most Important Passage in Mayan Literature”

with Mark Van Stone, Ph.D., G.F.

The Primary Standard Sequence, or PSS, was written around the rims of thousands of ancient Maya vases. Mike Coe discovered it when assembling the famous Grolier Club exhibition “The Maya Scribe and His World” in 1972. It is also known as the “Dedicatory Formula”.
The Primary Standard Sequence displays the calligraphic range of Maya scribes. With so many repetitions, this “blessing” or “name-tag” gives us by far the most-numerous examples of the same text. This is an invaluable database for the study of the range and richness of Maya handwriting. Different Maya workshops habitually used specific versions of this phrase, and the texts reveal differences in dialect and ritual. The formula is also very, very old. It contains archaistic linguistic features and spellings that resisted change throughout the Classic period... Sacredness can fossilize cultural features, such as benedictions, architecture, and the costumes of nuns and priests, and the PSS gives us a glimpse of the earliest versions of Mayan speech.

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Mark Van Stone
is a lifelong autodidact, netsuke carver in Japan, clay-animator, Guggenheim Fellow, with a Ph.D. in Maya Hieroglyphs (UT-Austin). A gamma-ray astronomy tech with a BA in Physics, then a calligrapher, carver, and paleographer, Mark is now professor of Art History. Mark’s approach to understanding the craft and practicing it: “Picking up a pen or a chisel will teach you something about paleography or sculpture, that you can learn in no other way.” In 1997, Michael Coe invited him to be co-author for Reading the Maya Glyphs – because, Coe said, “You’re a calligrapher. Your glyph drawings are the best.” Mark’s most recent book, Maya Mold Made (with co-author Paul Johnson), is a catalog of Ancient Maya ceramic molds and an investigation into the function of Maya figurines. molds