Linda Schele

This meeting established the previously unknown Linda as a major figure in the Maya studies, not only of art and history, but also of dirt archaeology and epigraphy,[4] and her work stimulated several later discoveries, by herself and others.

In 1975, Schele was invited to the Second International Archaeoastronomy Conference at Colgate to present an exploratory paper on Palenque hierophanies and their link to emblem and skull variant glyphs, which she later published in 1977.

[7] Twenty years later, the workshop expanded into what is known as the Maya Meetings at Texas, and includes a symposium of research papers by major scholars and the Forum on Hieroglyphic Writing.

By this time in her life, Schele realized her destiny as a Mayanist; she enrolled as a graduate student in Latin American Studies at the University of Texas shortly before resigning from her position at South Alabama.

Schele joined the Copán Mosaics Project in the mid 1980s, working with David Stuart, Barbara Fash, and Nikolai Grube on the texts of that site.

[9] Shortly after, she began a related series called the Copán Notes, reports on epigraphy and iconography, which were aimed at rapid dissemination of information amongst Maya scholars.

The exhibition spoke of an obsession with royal descent, of incessant warfare, and of bloody sacrifice and self-mutilation which was inconsistent with the models proposed by previous generations of Mayanists.

The Texas Notes were informal reports produced by Linda Schele and others between 1990 and 1997 to allow for the quick dissemination of results in the rapidly evolving field of Maya epigraphy.