Vital Signs: The Visual Culture of Maya Writing, by Stephen Houston. Princeton University Press, 2026. The 72nd A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Bollingen Series XXXV: volume 72.
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How scribes of the ancient Maya pictured sound and meaning through inventive hieroglyphic writing that pulsed with vitality and wit.
“A true landmark. Houston’s analysis goes beyond that of a single culture to speak to essential questions about the human psyche. No one has attempted such a deep and comprehensive treatment of art-as-writing and writing-as-art in the Americas before—and no other author would be capable of producing such a work.”—Simon Martin, author of Ancient Maya Politics: A Political Anthropology of the Classic Period 150–900 CE.
“Highly compelling and important. Houston probes the limits of what we can know about Maya society during the Classic period by thoughtfully contextualizing the many subtleties of Maya visual media and hieroglyphic text across geographic and temporal scales. Vital Signs is a book that any student of the humanities should own.”—Franco D. Rossi, co-editor of The Adorned Body: Mapping Ancient Maya Dress.
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