Rolling out the Maya universe: Justin Kerr's innovative peripheral camera has revolutionized the study of glyphs and imagery, unfurling new perspectives on this sophisticated pre-Columbian culture.

• Author: Bach, Caleb
• Position: Cover Story

As any New World cartographer figured out five hundred years ago, rounded surfaces hold their secrets tightly. How to map them, lay them fiat, without losing all sense of proportion, of meaning? It's a problem that photographer and self-taught Mayanist Justin Kerr understands well. Three decades ago he developed a peripheral camera for the specific purpose of roiling out artifactual images as one sustained strip. In the words of Michael Coe, author of Breaking the May Code and himself a great pioneer in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology, "For those of us who work with Maya iconography and hieroglyphic writing, Justin's invention of the rollout camera ranks with the discovery of carbon-14 dating."

Because of Kerr's invention, scholars steeped in epigraphy, iconography, linguistics, lexicography, and a host of other specialized disciplines have been able to decipher much of the hieroglyphic writing left by the Maya on buildings, stelae, and the surface of clay vessels. While proving without a doubt that these ancient Mesoamericans did indeed possess a true written language in the fullest sense of the word (something that had been heatedly debated for decades), these specialists also have radically revised and enhanced our sense of nearly every aspect of Maya culture. Curiously, the vast majority of glyphs are not found on jungle-shrouded structures nor monuments carved from stone but rather survive as paintings or incisions on several thousand clay vases now in public and private collections. Most are cylindrical in shape. So, to analyze or compare the narrative sequence of image and text on the circumference of each vessel, Maya scholars once had to photograph each vase in sections and then employ artists to painstakingly copy and reassemble all the details into one unbroken band.

But Kerr's contribution to Maya studies goes even further. Early on, as he began to create rollouts of what would be nearly fourteen hundred vessels, he realized he was in an ideal position to create a photographic catalog of vases, each identified by number. (For example, somewhat like Ludwig von Kochel's famous index of Mozart compositions, K1451 in the Kerr system refers to a polychrome vase belonging to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.) "Justin has always been a whiz on the computer," says Barbara, his wife. And so with vision and generosity, he decided to put the entire archive on an Internet website that he calls www.mayavase.com. Anyone near or far, young or old, professional or amateur may access the information, and even print out detailed, full-color rollouts of each vessel.

Talking with Kerr at his New York City home, a Chelsea loft apartment and studio, he often refers to Maya vases as "cylinders." "I used to chide our dear friend, the late Linda Schele, who authored that breakthrough study of the Maya, The Blood of Kings, because she insisted on calling them `pots.' They certainly weren't cooking pots! Of course, almost all of the Maya books--codices--were destroyed by the Spaniards at the time of the conquest, hence the cylinders represent our primary source of Maya writing."

Although many experts believe the Maya used the painted vessels to pour foamy chocolate into clay cups or gourds from which they drank, Kerr is of the opinion they were primarily sacred objects. "I think the images on them were messages about beliefs and rituals that were understood by a literate elite and meant for their gods. If these were mere drinking vessels, then what would have been the purpose of repairing broken vases in ancient times? The repair involved drilling holes and lacing the parts together. They would have leaked if filled with liquid."

Many vessels contain a series of glyphs in a horizontal band just below the rim, something Coe has called the "PSS," which stands for Primary Standard Sequence. In The Art of the Maya Scribe (essential reading for anyone interested in...