Mesoamerica Resources
When I was first studying Mesoamerica there were a lot of things I wish I had known that really could have helped me, and I feel like it’s my responsibility to share these things. There are a lot more online resources out there than you might think, and I hope these can be of some help to all the aspiring archaeologists in the world!
Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., www.famsi.org
FAMSI is the ultimate resource for Mesoamericanists. There are articles, scientific reports, unpublished papers by great researchers, dictionaries, syllabaries, drawings, and sometimes even full copies of books. I seriously cannot recommend this enough. If you are interested in anything at all Mesoamerican then you will find something on FAMSI.
Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs, FAMSI, http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/dictionary/montgomery/index.html
This is an extension of FAMSI but it’s also the area of the site I use the most as an epigrapher and I think it deserves a separate mention. It is a full dictionary of all Maya hieroglyphs, including syllabograms and logograms, and can be searched in both English and Maya. Honestly I cannot stress enough how much I use this dictionary and syllabary. It also includes pronunciation soundbites for every entry as well as notes on the grammar and history of glyphs and is generally just such a great resource.
Mesolore, http://www.mesolore.org/
Mesolore is a great site for those of us interested in Central Mexican manuscripts and epigraphy. It features a number of interactive manuscripts where you can actually click on a portion of the page and see an explanation/translation for the image/text. Taking the dive into the codices can be very daunting (speaking from personal experience), but being able to go through each image step by step is such a helpful tool.
The Maya Hieroglyphic Codices, http://www.mayacodices.com/
Another codex website! Also an invaluable resource for me during the course of my research, this website allows you to search through all four Maya codices, including the Grolier (which has yet to be authenticated and about which I personally have my doubts but that’s a separate topic...). You can search by subject, iconography, text, Maya words, deities, glyphs, and essentially everything you can think of. It’s amazing and I’m obsessed with it. Try it out. Just do it.
These are just a few of my top resources but I hope that they help all the budding Mesoamericanists out there!! These have honestly saved my life so many times and I’m not even joking when I say I spend my all free time on FAMSI... copying glyphs might be my form of stress relief. Anyway, good luck everyone!!