Recording the Political History of Chichén Itzá: Photography of the Denison Rubbings and Archival Research at the Peabody Museum
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Research Year:  1996
Culture:  Maya
Chronology:  Late Classic to Post Classic
Location:  Yucatán, México
Site:  Chichén Itzá

Table of Contents

The Denison Rubbings
Changes in the Original Work Plan
Photography of the Denison Rubbings at the Peabody Museum
Scanning the Photographs
Sampling of the Scanned Images
Archival Research at the Peabody Museum
Acknowledgements
Sources Cited

The Denison Rubbings

In 1933, J. H. Denison produced a set of rubbings of selected hieroglyphic inscriptions from Chichén Itzá at the request of S. G. Morley as part of the archaeological investigations being conducted at the site by the Carnegie Institution of Washington. These rubbings are the ones that Hermann Beyer cut-up into pieces for his 1937 structural analysis of Chichén Itzá’s inscriptions (see Bolles 1977:262, 264). Ian Graham of the Peabody Museum has stored the rubbings in several manila envelopes and while they are still cut-up in pieces, most of them have been mounted onto sheets of paper and labeled for easy reference. Although I had never seen the rubbings, I reasoned that they might reveal more detail than the more recent Merle Greene Robertson rubbings, due to weathering over time. In a few cases, this did prove to be the case, however, the overall quality of Merle Greene Robertson’s rubbings is superior to Denison’s. This makes both sets of information useful and complementary. I have already been able to use the Denison Rubbings as aids in my drawings of the hieroglyphic inscriptions and I am very pleased that this information will now be made available to other scholars. The drawings I am working on will augment my current collection of published drawings of Chichén Itzá’s inscriptions (Krochock 1989; Krochock in press; Wren, Schmidt and Krochock 1989) and will be of key importance in my dissertation on the political history of Chichén Itzá.

As a side note, I would like to mention that some of the "Denison" rubbings seem to have been produced by a Mr. Conrad Kratz. At this time, I am not sure how many of the rubbings he did, but I will continue to research this issue so that he may be given proper credit for his work.

Click to download the report in PDF format:

Recording the Political History of Chichén Itzá: Photography of the Denison Rubbings and Archival Research at the Peabody Museum  (209 KB)

Individual PDF files are also available for the various monuments.

Chichén Itzá
Akab Tz'ib Lintel Front  (698 KB)
Akab Tz'ib Lintel Underside  (3.26 MB)
Caracol Fragments
Fragment A  (773 KB)
Fragment B  (737 KB)
Fragment C  (589 KB)
Fragment 4  (181 KB)
Fragment 5  (658 KB)
Fragment 6  (640 KB)
Fragment 7  (645 KB)
Fragment 8  (576 KB)
Fragment 9  (514 KB)
Fragment 10  (580 KB)
Fragment 11  (459 KB)
Fragment 12  (338 KB)
Fragment 13  (190 KB)
Fragment 14  (299 KB)
Fragment 15  (310 KB)
Fragment 16  (280 KB)
Fragment 17  (283 KB)
Fragment 18  (874 KB)
Caracol Pier  (734 KB)
High Priest's Grave Column  (662 KB)
High Priest's Grave Fragments  (1.85 MB)
Las Monjas Lintels
Lintel 1a  (1.38 MB)
Lintel 2  (3.07 MB)
Lintel 2a  (1.41 MB)
Lintel 3  (3.09 MB)
Lintel 3a  (1.64 MB)
Lintel 4  (3.23 MB)
Lintel 4a  (1.60 MB)
Lintel 5  (2.63 MB)
Lintel 5a  (887 KB)
Lintel 6  (3.03 MB)
Las Monjas East Wing Annex Lintel  (1.91 MB)
Serpent's Tail  (2.45 MB)
Temple of the Four Lintels
Lintel 1  (2.83 MB)
Lintel 1a  (665 KB)
Lintel 2  (2.72 MB)
Lintel 2a  (663 KB)
Lintel 3  (2.73 MB)
Lintel 3a  (695 KB)
Lintel 4  (2.85 MB)
Lintel 4a  (707 KB)
Hieroglyphic Jambs
East Jamb  (4.72 MB)
West Jamb  (4.86 MB)
Temple of the Initial Series Lintel
Front  (716 KB)
Underside  (2.83 MB)
Temple of the One Lintel  (4.08 MB)
Temple of the Three Lintels
Lintel 1  (964 KB)
Lintel 2  (507 KB)
Lintel 3  (909 KB)3
Xtoloc Lintel  (239 KB)
Yula
Yula Lintels
Lintel 1  (2.40 MB)
Lintel 1a  (1.05 MB)
Lintel 2  (2.67 MB)
Lintel 2a  (711 KB)

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Submitted 03/01/1997 by:


Revised December 2012