Tatiana Proskouriakoff

Tatiana Avenirovna Proskouriakoff ( born January 23, 1909 in Tomsk, Russia; † August 30, 1985 in Cambridge (Massachusetts), USA) was an American Altamerikanistin and illustrator of Russian origin who made ​​fundamental research and observations to the Mayan culture.

Life

Proskouriakoff came as a child in the United States. After undergraduate studies in Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University, she worked as an archaeological illustrator. Your ability to combine ethnographic, artistic, architectural and archaeological knowledge productive, it enabled her to design a remarkable picture to date of the Mayan culture. Prouskouriakoff worked from 1937 at the Carnegie Institute and from 1958 to 1977 at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. In 1962 she was awarded the Alfred V. Kidder - Medal, and in 1984 she was awarded the highest decoration of the State of Guatemala, the Order of Quetzal.

Especially earned Tatiana Prouskouriakoff made ​​in deciphering the Maya writing: Although she managed not yet the final breakthrough, but it initiated with an article on the character of the inscriptions of the Maya site of Piedras Negras, as well as studies on the stelae at Tikal and Chichen Itza a turning point in the Maya research. She realized that the inscriptions refer to events of the life of Maya rulers and identified in this context, especially many verbs (such as birth, death ).

Publications

• An Album of Maya Architecture. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, 1946.
• A Study of Classic Maya sculpture. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington.