About

David Stuart is a professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, within the College of Liberal Arts. His academic focus encompasses archaeology, art, linguistics, and epigraphy, with particular expertise in Mesoamerica, Mexico, and Central America. His work involves the study and interpretation of ancient Mesoamerican cultures through their art and inscriptions, contributing to the understanding of their history and civilization.

Research topics

• History
• Archaeology
• Ancient history
• Sociology
• Geography
• Political Science
• Physics
• Biology
• Ecology
• Art history
• Anthropology
• Law

Selected publications

• God in Conversation and Politics as Conversation: An Imagined Conversation Between Christoph Schwöbel and Sayyid Qutb

  2025-06-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• An early Maya calendar record from San Bartolo, Guatemala

  Science Advances · 2022 · 25 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Archaeology
  • Ancient history
  • Geography

  Here, we present evidence for the earliest known calendar notation from the Maya region, found among fragments of painted murals excavated at San Bartolo, Guatemala. On the basis of their sealed contexts in an early architectural phase of the "Las Pinturas" pyramid, we assign these fragments to between 300 and 200 BCE, preceding the other well-known mural chamber of San Bartolo by approximately 150 years. The date record "7 Deer" represents a day in the 260-day divinatory calendar used throughout Mesoamerica and among indigenous Maya communities today. It is presented along with 10 other text fragments that reveal an established writing tradition, multiple scribal hands, and murals combining texts with images from an early ritual complex. The 7 Deer day record represents the earliest securely dated example of the Maya calendar and is important to understanding the development of the 260-day count and associated aspects of Mesoamerican religion and cosmological science.

  PublisherDOI

• SEASONAL GODS AND COSMIC RULERS

  2021-12-28 · 1 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Un trono dividido: El origen y los movimientos de la Banca Jeroglífica 1 de Ixtutz, Guatemala

  Latin American Antiquity · 2021-10-18 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Aquí presentamos el descubrimiento de una banca jeroglífica esculpida del sitio maya de Ixtutz, Petén, Guatemala. Analizamos la inscripción jeroglífica en la banca y discutimos la historia del objecto en el contexto de su producción, su desmantelamiento y reutilización subsecuente, y la remoción de unas piezas del sitio. Mostramos que dos bloques inscritos de caliza, uno de ellos en una colección privada en Bruselas y el otro en el Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, pertenecen al mismo trono, y llamamos para su repatriación voluntaria a Guatemala.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Teotihuacan complex at the Classic Maya city of Tikal, Guatemala

  Antiquity · 2021 · 21 citations

  • Archaeology
  • Ancient history
  • Geography

  Lidar reveals the presence of a precinct at the Classic Maya city of Tikal that probably reproduces the Ciudadela and Temple of the Feathered Serpent at the imperial capital of Teotihuacan.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Wahys of Witchcraft: Sorcery and Political Power among the Classic Maya

  University Press of Colorado eBooks · 2020 · 37 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Anthropology
  PublisherDOI

• "Off with his head!":A Heretofore Unknown Monument of Tonina, Chiapas

  Research at the University of Copenhagen (University of Copenhagen) · 2019-10-08

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDF

• Proper Names and the Development of Early Writing Systems

  The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology · 2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• El emperador y el cosmos: nueva mirada a la piedra del sol

  Arqueología mexicana · 2018-01-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  La composicion de la Piedra del Sol pone de relieve algo mas alla de un simple sol. Es una imagen personalizada de dinamismo temporal y solar, que muestra el eje vertical suelo-cenit, proporcionando la idea de centralidad cosmica. Bien pudo haber sido un monumento publico. a la vista de todos, en cualquier momento, y por lo tanto concebido adecuadamente como un momoztli, un sitio cotidiano

  Publisher

• Peopling the Classic Maya Court

  2018-05-15 · 44 citations

  book-chapterSenior author

  This chapter discusses Justin and Barbara Kerr graciously allowed us to do the renderings of royal weaving bones. Maya royalty and nobility must first be viewed according to the problem of power and power relations. Power can be conventionally defined as an absolute term that helps to isolate and refine comparative patterns of coercion and obedience. For all the negative or positive tactical consequences, such contacts with major centers, either through court service or intermarriage, likely operated as the very engine that disseminated Maya courtly practice and tempered a tendency to local idiosyncrasy. That power has to be understood in part through local idioms raises another issue. A difficult problem for understanding the Classic court is the evidence for polygamy. The royal court encompassed many other kinds of people, most, one presumes, in a service or productive capacity that would leave few vestiges in art and writing.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Guillaume Sierra

  41 shared

• Frédéric Deschaux‐Beaume

  33 shared

• Gilles Fras

  Association of French Motorway Companies

  33 shared

• Patrice Peyre

  École nationale supérieure d'arts et métiers

  26 shared

• Stephen Houston

  John Brown University

  24 shared

• William Saturno

  11 shared

• Karl Taube

  10 shared

• Cyril Bordreuil

  Université de Montpellier

  9 shared

Education

• PhD, Anthropology

  Vanderbilt University

  1995

• BA, Art and Archaeology

  Princeton University

  1989