Professor Emeritus Norman Hammond honored by the University of Utah
Professor Emeritus Norman Hammond was honored by the University of Utah in November, with a two-day symposium held on early Maya archaeology and dedicated to him and the 92-year-old pioneer in this field, Ray T. Matheny. Speakers came from Guatemala as well as from Europe and across the USA, and at a banquet Professor Hammond was presented with an inscribed rosewood carving made by a Maya artisan. It depicts one of the eighth-century rulers of Yaxchilan, a Maya city on the Usumacinta River in Mexico, as depicted on the famous Lintel 24 carved in AD 725. Shield Jaguar holds a towering flaming torch to illuminate a night-time ceremony, at which his wife, Lady Xoc, lets blood by passing a thorn-studded cord through her tongue. He is about to go to war, and the offering will aid his success. The dedication to Professor Hammond’s “lighting the way” for other Maya scholars reflects the subject of the carving.
