We are in the process of trying to find all the notes and documents typed by Nicholas Hellmuth in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s and scanning them so they can be available to archaeologists, iconographers, students, and the interested general public. We recently found two documents from the 1980’s of Hellmuth’s listing of all the basal flange bowls and most of the tetrapods that he had photographed during the recent two decades in museums and collections around the world.
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Pages 22 to 147 of Hellmuth’s 1986 description of size, shape, and iconography of hundreds of Maya Early Classic basal flange bowls and earlier tetrapods, both photographed by Nicholas Hellmuth and also lists of these ceramics in site report publications. |
APPENDIX A, 12-page annotated index of the FLAAR Photo Archive contact sheet numbers of B&W 35mm Leica and medium-format Hasselblad contact sheets for about 370 Maya basal flange bowls and tetrapods in contact sheets now at Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University. |
In October 2024, while discussing where to donate the FLAAR Photo Archive with Dr Mary Miller, she suggested that FLAAR and Hellmuth donate all the many decades of photographs to Dumbarton Oaks, so that this huge photo archive could be available to archaeologists, epigraphers, iconographers and students via the same style of Dumbarton Oaks database as the Justin Kerr rollout photo archive. So FLAAR and Hellmuth donated the archive in October. In mid-November a truck was sent by Dumbarton Oaks to pick up the archive and drive it to Washington D.C. Once the 124 boxes of an estimated 30,000 35mm color slides and tens-of-thousands of black-and-white 35mm and medium-format negatives are unpacked, sorted, organized, then they will be scanned and cataloged by Dumbarton Oaks and made available to scholars and students on-line as downloads. This photo archive also includes views of monumental Maya architecture of Rio Bec, Chenes, Puuc regional styles of Mexico plus architecture of many other Maya sites in Tabasco, Chiapas and Peten.
This is why Hellmuth and FLAAR are trying to find ALL the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s research reports typed by Hellmuth so this documentation can be sent to Dumbarton Oaks to assist in classifying the photos and providing appropriate keywords for search engines.
Photographs used by scholars and by students (in their thesis or PhD dissertation) should now have captions, Photo by Nicholas Hellmuth, FLAAR Photo Archive, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University.
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So far we have found only pages 22 to 147 of the 1986 report on basal flange bowls. If your library or if you know of an archaeologist who has the complete original publication, we would appreciate scans of the Introduction, pages 1 to 21, and all the pages after page 147, so we can update our PDF. The name of the original publication is: |
Recent FLAAR Reports on Polychrome Basal Flange Bowls
The FLAAR Reports below were written before the donation to Dumbarton Oaks and do not yet have citations as to size or where the photo was taken since the 1986 documentation was not found until several months later. So the 1986 Hellmuth publication in effect provides a description of most of the basal flange bowls published in year 2024.
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Polychrome Painted Basal Flange Bowls, Nicholas Hellmuth, August 2024, 159 pages, which is abundant information and hundreds of photos in color of Early Classic Maya pottery. |
Copan 3D Monkey Heads as Lids for Basal Flange Bowls, COPAN CRIA Storage, Hellmuth, May 2024. Although Copan is far from Peten it shares many Maya iconographic motifs. |
Black Basal Flange Bowls, so blackware where designs are carved, gouged, or incised with no polychrome painting. July 2024, 46 pages filled with wonderful photos of iconographically rich scenes. |
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Research notes on
Mayan Iconography, Epigraphy
Ceramic Styles: Regional & Temporal
Palace and Temple Architecture
and Lacandon Ethnohistory |
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Mammiform Tetrapods, Ceramics with four female breast-shaped supports, May 2024, photos found in old 1990’s SSD disk. Mammiform Tetrapods were earlier than Peccary-Head Tetrapods which were earlier than basal flange bowls.
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Posted January 17, 2025
by Nicholas Hellmuth
