Christian Prager

Vita

Studied Anthropology of the Americas, Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology, and Classical Archaeology at the University of Bonn. Doctoral dissertation in the subject area "Ethnology with particular focus on Anthropology of the Americas" about Classic Maya conceptions of their gods (2013). Research assistant with and project coordinator of "Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan" of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts since 2014. Founding member of Wayeb, the European Association of Mayanists, and editor of the scholarly journal Mexicon. Project epigrapher with the Pusilha Archaeological Project under the direction of Geoffrey Braswell from 2000 to 2010, and co-organizer of multiple conferences about Maya writing and culture. Collaborated on project with Frauke Sachse and John Weeks from 2004 to 2009, resulting in publication of three colonial Maya calendrical manuscripts from the Guatemalan Highlands (2009).

Areas of Interest

Cognitive study of religion (how cognitive mechanisms influence the innovation and transmission of religion); cultural transmission (how people acquire cultural knowledge, store it in their memory, and communicate it); the ethnology of religion, with focus on phenomenology and the history of Mesoamerican religion, particularly pre-Hispanic and colonial Maya culture; Classic Maya time mechanics and conceptions of time; Maya writing and iconography as a system and its function as a medium of cultural memory; documentation and publication of written and pictorial sources on Classic Maya culture; conquest-era and colonial history of the American continent, especially Yucatan; the history of the discipline and the biographies of its experts; methods and techniques of digital humanities

Publications

Prager, Christian M.
1994    Investigations of T501[544]: Preliminary Thoughts on the “Sun-Imix” Glyph. Unpublished Manuscript. Aesch.
1995    Preliminary Notes on the Classic Maya Expressions for “Ball Court.” Unpublished Manuscript. n.l.
1996    Notes on Maya Hieroglyphic Texts in the Codices: Part I. Yumtzilob 9(1):29–44.
1997a    Treasures from the New World’: A Permanent Exhibition in Basel’s Museum of Cultures. Mexicon 19(4):64.
1997b    Notes on Maya Hieroglyphic Texts in the Codices I. Yumtzilob 9(1):29–44.
1997c    La herencia de Otto Stoll en la Biblioteca Central de Zúrich, Suiza: Una recopilación de sus manuscritos sobre América central. Mexicon 19(5):86–91.
1997d    Drawings of Maya Inscriptions. In U Mut Maya VI: Reports and Readings Inspired by the Advanced Seminars Led by Linda Scheler at the University of Texas at
Austin, 1994-1996, Tom Jones and Carolyn Jones, editors, pp. 211–215. Carolyn and Tom Jones, Arcata, CA.
1997e    A Reconstruction of the Hieroglyphic Text on Lintel 50 of Yaxchilan. In U Mut Maya VI: Reports and Readings Inspired by the Advanced Seminars Led by Linda Scheler at the University of Texas at Austin, 1994-1996, Tom Jones and Carolyn Jones, editors, pp. 175–176. Carolyn and Tom Jones, Arcata, CA.
1998    Precolumbian Art Exhibition at the Rath Museum Geneva. Mexicon 20(4):71.
2000a    Jaina: die Inselnekropole. In Maya: Gottkönige im Regenwald, Nikolai Grube, editor, pp. 308–309. Könemann, Köln.
2000b    Hofzwerge: Begleiter der Herrschenden und Boten der Unterwelt. In Maya: Gottkönige im Regenwald, Nikolai Grube, editor, pp. 278–279. Könemann, Köln.
2000c    Die spanische Landnahme von Yukatan und Guatemala im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. In Maya: Gottkönige im Regenwald, Nikolai Grube, editor, pp. 372–381. Könemann, Köln.
2001a    The Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and Guatemala in the 16th and 17th Centuries. In Maya: Divine Kings of the Rain Forest, Nikolai Grube, Eva Eggebrecht, and Matthias Seidel, editors, pp. 372-. Könemann, Köln.
2001b    Jaina, the Island Necropolis. In Maya: Divine Kings of the Rain Forest, Nikolai Grube, Eva Eggebrecht, and Matthias Seidel, editors, pp. 308-. Könemann, Köln.
2001c    Court Dwarfs: The Companions of Rulers and Envoys of the Underworld. In Maya: Divine Kings of the Rain Forest, Nikolai Grube, Eva Eggebrecht, and Matthias Seidel, editors, pp. 278–279. Könemann, Köln.
2002a    Enanismo y gibosidad: Las personas afectadas y su identidad en la sociedad maya del tiempo prehispánico. In La organización social entre los mayas, Vera Tiesler Blos, Merle G. Robertson, and Rafael Cobos, editors, 2:pp. 35–68. Memoria de la Tercera Mesa Redonda de Palenque. Instituto Nacional de Anthropología e Historia, Méxcio, D.F.
2002b    Die Inschriften von Pusilha: Epigraphische Analyse und Rekonstruktion der Geschichte einer klassischen Maya-Stätte. M.A. Thesis, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn. http://www.wayeb.org/download/theses/prager_2002.pdf.
2003a    Zahlklassifikatoren in Hieroglyphen-Inschriften der klassischen Maya-Kultur: Beobachtung zu T87. Wayeb Notes 2:1–8.
2003b    The Month Name Wayeb’: A Substitution Pattern. Wayeb Notes 4:1–2.
2004    A Classic Maya Ceramic Vessel from the Calakmul Region in the Museum Zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Human Mosaic: A Journal of the Social Sciences 35(1):31–40.
2006a    Petroglyph Found at the Classic Site of Pusilha, Belize. Mexicon 28(3):45–46.
2006b    Is T326 a Logograph for NA:M “Hide, to Go out of Sight”? Electronic Document. Bonn. https://www.academia.edu/8219716/Is_T326_a_Logograph_for_NA_M_hide_to_go_out_of_sight_.
2007a    Kampf um Ressourcen und Vormachtstellung: Krieg und Gefangennahme. In Maya - Könige aus dem Regenwald: Katalog zur Sonderausstellung, Inês de Castro, editor, pp. 116–125. Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum & Gebrüder Gerstenberg, Hildesheim.
2007b    Der Weg ins Jenseits: Tod bei den Maya. In Maya - Könige aus dem Regenwald: Katalog zur Sonderausstellung, Inês de Castro, editor, pp. 110–115. Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum & Gebrüder Gerstenberg, Hildesheim.
2008a    An Unusual Variant of the Maya Hieroglyph CHAN “Guardian.” Mexicon 30(5):102–104.
2008b    A Logograph for CHANUL. Electronic Document. Mayavase.Com. http://www.mayavase.com/chanul.pdf.
2008c    A Late Classic Maya Bowl in the Basel Paper Mill. Mexicon 30(5):97–98.
2010    Die Kognitionswissenschaftliche Erforschung von Religion. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 135(2):219–232.
2012    A “New” Hieroglyphic Fragment from Yaxchilan. Mexicon 34(6):142–143.
2013a    Übernatürliche Akteure in der Klassischen Maya-Religion: Eine Untersuchung zu intrakultureller Variation und Stabilität am Beispiel des k’uh “Götter”-Konzepts in den religiösen Vorstellungen und Überzeugungen Klassischer Maya-Eliten (250 - 900 n. Chr.). Inaugural-Dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn. http://hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de/2014/3539/3539.htm.
2013b    Is T911 a Logograph for AS or ASUL “Locust, Grasshopper”? Mexicon 35(3):58–59.
2013c    An Unprovenanced Polychrome Maya Vase from a Private Collection in Basel, Switzerland. Mexicon 35(5):107–109.
2013d    A Study of the Classic Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions of Pusilha, Toledo District, Belize. Indiana 30:247–282.
2013e    A Postclassic Allograph of the Maya Hieroglyph T79 PAT “to Build” from the Madrid Codex. Mexicon 35(1):6–7.
2014a    Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan. Mexicon 36(1):7–8.
2014b Sak Si-Hi: A Phonetic Spelling of the Month Name Sak. Electronic Document. Academia.Edu. https://www.academia.edu/8219943/sak_si-hi_a_Phonetic_Spelling_of_the_Month_Name_Sak.
2014c    Fundstätten- und Metadatenkonzept. Electronic Document. Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya. http://mayawoerterbuch.de/?p=5561.
2014d    A Preliminary Inventory of the Karl Herbert Mayer Photographic Collection, Graz. Electronic Document. Textdatenbank Und Wörterbuch Des Klassischen Maya. http://mayawoerterbuch.de/?p=2120.
2015a    Is T594 the Logograph for BAL(AW) “Cloth, Cover, Textile.” Electronic Document. Bonn. https://www.academia.edu/25792741/Notes_on_Ancient_Maya_Writing_-_Is_T594_the_Logograph_for_BAL_AW_cloth_cover_textile_.
2015b    Das Textdatenbank- und Wörterbuchprojekt des Klassischen Maya: Möglichkeiten und Herausforderungen digitaler Epigraphik. In TextGrid: Von der Community - für die Community: Eine Virtuelle Forschungsumgebung für die Geisteswissenschaften, Heike Neuroth, Andrea Rapp, and Sibylle Söring, editors, pp. 105–124. Werner Hülsbusch, Glückstadt. https://www.academia.edu/17957108/Das_Textdatenbank-_und_W%C3%B6rterbuchprojekt_des_Klassischen_Maya_
M%C3%B6glichkeiten_und_Herausforderungen_digitaler_Epigraphik.
2015c    Bibliography of Hanns J. Prem (1941-2014). Mexicon 37(1):10–13.
2015e    A Ceramic Vessel of Unknown Provenance in Bonn. Electronic Document. Textdatenbank Und Wörterbuch Des Klassischen Maya. http://mayawoerterbuch.de/?p=2221.
2015f  3D Scans of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions. In TextGrid: Von der Community - für die Community: Eine Virtuelle Forschungsumgebung für die Geisteswissenschaften, Heike Neuroth, Andrea Rapp, and Sibylle Söring, editors, pp. 105–125. Werner Hülsbusch, Glückstadt.
2016e    Jahrbuch, Yearbook, Anuario 2014-2015. Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya. Books on Demand, Norderstedt.
2016f    Ein Fenster in die Vergangenheit: Die Hieroglyphenscrhift der Maya und ihre Entzifferung. In Maya. Das Rätsel der Königsstädte, Nikolai Grube and Alexander Schubert, editors, pp. 254–259. Hirmer, München.
2016g    A Possible Logograph XAN “Palm” in Maya Writing. Electronic Document. Textdatenbank Und Wörterbuch Des Klassischen Maya. http://mayawoerterbuch.de/?p=7206.
2017a    Una ventana al pasado. La escritura jeroglífica de los mayas y su desciframiento. In Mayas: el enigma de las ciudades perdidas, Juan Antonio López Padilla, editor, pp. 122–129. MARQ, Alicante.
2017c    The Same Difference: Modes of Allography in Maya Hieroglyphic Texts. Paper presented at the Egyptian and Maya Writing: Comparing Hieroglyphic Domains. Workshop, “eikones”, Universität Basel, Basel.
2017d   Abformungen der Gipsformerei und des Ethnologischen Museums, Berlin: Eine Fotodokumentation von Objekten der Mayakultur, 250 - 1500 n.Chr. Unveröffentlichter Bericht. Bonn und Berlin. Ethnologisches Museum Berlin.
2018a   The Term “Lima Bean Vessel” in the Classic Mayan Lexicon. Electronic Document. Textdatenbank Und Wörterbuch Des Klassischen Maya, Research Note 9. http://mayawoerterbuch.de/the-term-lima-bean-vessel-in-the-classic-mayan-lexicon/.
2018b   The Signs 740 and 812 for SIH “Gift”: Representation and Meaning in the Maya Codices. Electronic Document. Textdatenbank Und Woerterbuch Des Klassischen Maya, Research Note 9. http://mayawoerterbuch.de/the-signs-740-and-812-for-sih-gift-representation-and-meaning-in-the-maya-codices/.
2018c    The Lexeme Potz “to Wrap, Cover” in Classic Maya Hieroglyphic Texts. Mexicon 40(1):4–7.
2018d    A Study of the Classic Maya K’uh Concept. In Tiempo detenido, tiempo suficiente: ensayos y narraciones mesoamericanistas en homenaje a Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo, Harri Kettunen, Verónica A. Vázquez L., Felix Kupprat, Cristina Vidal Lorenzo, Gaspar Muñoz Cosme, and María Iglesia Ponce de Leon, editors, pp. 547–612. Wayeb Publication 1. European Association of Mayanists WAYEB, Belgium.
2020a   The Sign 576 as a Logograph for KUK, a Type of Bundle. Electronic Document. Textdatenbank Und Wörterbuch Des Klassischen Maya, Research Note 15. https://mayawoerterbuch.de/the-sign-576-as-a-logograph-for-kuk-a-type-of-bundle/.
2020b    Reading Ancient Maya Hieroglyphic Books presented at the Navigating the Text: Textual Articulation and Division Across Cultures. Merton College and The Queen’s College, organized by Yegor Grebnev, Oxford.
2020c    A New Logogram for <HUL> “to Arrive” – Implications for the Decipherment of the Month Name Cumku. Electronic Document. Textdatenbank Und Wörterbuch Des Klassischen Maya, Research Note 13. https://mayawoerterbuch.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/twkm_note_013.pdf.
2021a   Zeit und Macht: Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft als Herrschatsmittel der Maya-Gottkönige. In Zeit Ist Macht. Wer Macht Zeit -Time Is Power. Who Makes the Time? 13. Mitteldeutscher Archäologentag 2020, Harald Meller, Alfred Reichenberger, and Roberto Risch, editors, pp. 277–292. Tagungen des Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte Halle 24. Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, Halle.
2021b    Zeit und Geschichte als Mittel zur Herrschaftslegitimation der Maya-Gottkönige. Antike Welt 52(5):26–30.
2021c    Visual Dimensions of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: Meanings Beyond the Surface. In The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices, Philip J. Boyes, Philippa M. Steele, and Natalia Elvira Astoreca, editors, pp. 101–124. Oxbow Books, Oxford.
2021d    A Logogram for WAX “Grey Fox” in Maya Hieroglyphic Writing. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 63. Boundary End Archaeology Research Center, Barnardsville, NC.
2022   Visualizations and Expressions of Dependencies in Classic Maya Narratives: A Semiotic Approach. In Slavery and Other Forms of Strong Asymmetrical Dependencies: Semantics and Lexical Fields, Jeannine Bischoff and Stephan Conermann, editors, pp. 151–178. Dependency and Slavery Studies 4. De Gruyter, Boston, MA.

Bill, Cassandra R., Geoffrey E. Braswell, and Christian M. Prager
2005    Interacción económica y política en la periferia Maya: Evidencia nueva de Pusilha, Belice. In XVIII Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2004, Juan P. Laporte, Bárbara Arroyo, and Héctor E. Mejía, editors, pp. 455–463. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala. http://www.asociaciontikal.com/v2/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/40-Braswell.04.pdf.
Bogacz, Bartosz, Felix Feldmann, Christian Prager, and Hubert Mara
2018    Visualizing Networks of Maya Glyphs by Clustering Subglyphs. In Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage, Robert Sablatnig and Michael Wimmer, editors, pp. 105–111. The Eurographics Association, Goslar. 10.2312/gch.20181346.
Braswell, Geoffrey E., Cassandra R. Bill, and Christian M. Prager
2008    Exchange, Political Relations, and Regional Interaction: The Ancient City of Pusilhá in the Late Classic Maya World. In Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology, John Morris, Christophe G.B. Helmke, Sherilyne Jones, and Jaime J. Awe, editors, 5:pp. 51–62. Institute of Archaeology, National Institute of Culture and History, Belmopan. http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00011738/00001.
Braswell, Geoffrey E., Sherry L. Gibbs, Christian M. Prager, and Cassandra R. Bill
2006    Interacción, migración y la emergencia de una ciudad maya: evidencia nueva de Pusilha, Belice. Los Investigadores de la Cultura  Maya 14(2):317–328.
Braswell, Geoffrey E., and Christian Prager
2017    La “Joya del Viento” del rey Janaab Ohl K’inich: un gran jade con texto jeroglífico largo recuperado de una tumba Clásico Terminal en Nim li Punit, Belice. In XXX Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2016, Bárbara Arroyo, Luis Méndez Salinas, and Gloria Ajú Álvarez, editors, pp. 657–668. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala.
2003    ¿Una unidad política secundaria en el área maya?. El caso posible de Pusilha, Belice. Los Investigadores de la Cultura  Maya 11(1):210–225.
Braswell, Geoffrey E., Christian M. Prager, and Cassandra R. Bill
2005    The Kingdom of the Avocado: Recent Investigations at Pusilhá, a Classic Maya City of Southern Belize. Anthropological Notebooks 11(1):59–86.
Braswell, Geoffrey E., Christian M. Prager, Cassandra R. Bill, and Sonja Schwake
2004    Recent Archaeological and Epigraphic Research at Pusilha, Belize: Report of the 2001 and 2002 Field Seasons. In Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology, Sherilyne Jones, John Morris, and Jaime J. Awe, editors, 1:pp. 333–345. Institute of Archaeology, National Institute of Culture and History, Belmopan.
Braswell, Geoffrey E., Christian M. Prager, Cassandra R. Bill, Sonja A. Schwake, and Jennifer B. Braswell
2004    The Rise of Secondary States in the Southeastern Periphery of the Maya World: A Report on Recent Archaeological and Epigraphic Research at Pusilha, Belize. Ancient Mesoamerica 15(2):219–233.
Diederichs, Katja, Sven Gronemeyer, Christian M. Prager, Elisabeth Wagner, Franziska Diehr, Maximilian Brodhun, and Nikolai Grube
2016    A Virtual Research Environment to Document and Analyze Non-Alphabetic Writing Systems: A Case Study for Maya Writing. In Digital and Traditional Epigraphy in Context (Proceedings of the Second EAGLE International Conference, Rome 27-29 January 2016), Silvia Orlandi, Raffaella Santucci, Pietro Maria Liuzzo, and Francesco Mambrini, editors, pp. 195–208. Sapienza, Rom.
Diederichs, Katja, Christian M. Prager, Maximilian Brodhun, and Céline Tamignaux
2020    „Ich brauch’ mal ein Foto …“: der Umgang mit Bildern im Projekt Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya. In Bilddaten in den Digitalen Geisteswissenschaften., Canan Hastik and Philipp Hegel, editors, pp. 175–197. Episteme in Bewegung: Beiträge zu einer transdisziplinären Wissensgeschichte 16. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. http://www.sfb-episteme.de/Listen_Read_Watch/schriftenreihe/hastik_hegel_bilddaten/index.html.
Diederichs, Katja, Christian M. Prager, Elisabeth Wagner, Sven Gronemeyer, and Nikolai Grube
2015    Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya. Wikipedia. https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Textdatenbank_und_W%C3%B6rterbuch_des_Klassischen_Maya&oldid=145854648.
Diehr, Franziska, Maximilian Brodhun, Sven Gronemeyer, Katja Diederichs, Christian M. Prager, Elisabeth Wagner, and Nikolai Grube
2017    Modellierung eines digitalen Zeichenkatalogs für die Hieroglyphen des Klassischen Maya. In Informatik 2017, Maximilian Eibl and Martin Gaedke, editors, pp. 1185–1196. Gesellschaft für Informatik, Bonn. https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/3882.
2018    Ein digitaler Zeichenkatalog als Organisationssystem für die noch nicht entzifferte Schrift der Klassischen Maya. In Knowledge Organization for Digital Humanities: Proceedings of the 15th Conference on Knowledge Organization WissOrg’17 of the German Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) [30th November - 1st December 2017, Freie Universität Berlin], Christian Wartena, Michael Franke-Maier, and Ernesto de Luca, editors, pp. 37–43. Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin. http://edocs.fu-berlin.de/docs/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDOCS_derivate_000000009518/ProcWissOrg2017.pdf.
Diehr, Franziska, Sven Gronemeyer, Christian M. Prager, Katja Diederichs, Maximilian Brodhun, and Uwe Sikora
2019    Modellierung von Entzifferungshypothesen in einem digitalen Zeichenkatalog für die Maya-Schrift. , editorsAndreas Kuczera, Thorsten Wübbena, and Thomas Kollatz. Zeitschrift für digitale Geisteswissenschaften, Sonderband 4.
Diehr, Franziska, Sven Gronemeyer, Christian M. Prager, Katja Diederichs, Nikolai Grube, and Uwe Sikora
2019    Modelling Vagueness – A Criteria-Based System for the Qualitative Assessment of Reading Proposals for the Deciphering of Classic Mayan Hieroglyphs. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Methods in the Humanities 2018, pp. 33–44. CEUR Workshop Proceedings 2314. Université de Lausanne, Lausanne. https://dblp.org/db/conf/comhum/comhum2018.html.
Eberl, Markus, and Christian M. Prager
2000    A Fake Maya Bone. Mexicon 22(1):5.
2005    B’olon Yokte’ K’uh: Maya Conceptions of War, Conflict, and the Underworld. In Wars and Conflicts in Prehispanic Mesoamerica and the Andes, Peter Eeckhout and Geneviève Le Fort, editors, pp. 28–36. BAR International Series 1385. Hedges, Oxford. http://www.academia.edu/2525666/Bolon_Yokte_Kuh_Maya_conceptions_of_war_conflict_and_the_underworld.
Feige, Tillmann, Alicia González, Christian M. Prager, Cristina Vertan, and Heiko Werwick
2017    Nachhaltige Entwicklung digitaler Ressourcen und Werkzeuge für wenig erforschte historische Sprachen. In Dhd2017 Bern: Digitale Nachhaltigkeit, 13.-18. Februar 2017 (Konferenzabstracts), pp. 62–66. Universität Bern, Bern. http://www.dhd2017.ch/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Abstractband_ergaenzt.pdf.
Feldmann, Felix, Bartosz Bogacz, Christian M. Prager, and Hubert Mara
2017    Histogram of Oriented Gradients for Maya Glyph Retrieval. In Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage, Tobias Schreck, Tim Weyrich, Robert Sablatnig, and Benjamin Stular, editors, pp. 115–118. The Eurographics Association, Geneva. http://dx.doi.org/10.2312/gch.20171301.
Graña-Behrens, Daniel, Christian M. Prager, Frauke Sachse, Stefanie Teufel, and Elisabeth Wagner, editors,

Links

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