Lecture by Stephen Houston "Rhythms of Recall: Maya Writing and the People Beyond Living Memory" (Paris, September 10, 2026)

The GPR PSL Fabriques de l'antique and the Société des américanistes invite you to a lecture by Stephen Houston, to be held on Thursday, September 10, 2026, at 6:00 p.m., in the movie theater at the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac (free admission). 

The Classic Maya of Mexico and Central America wrote about events and people beyond living memory. The very distant were gods in primordial time. Other figures existed only a century or two before those who commissioned such records. In between were semi-mythic persons. Living when cities barely existed, they were, from our vantage point today, both real and fictional, like kings but with impossibly long lives and unusual traits. All reflect how the Maya constructed the past in relation to their own time, its dynastic and ritual concerns, and the buildings and spaces they devised with care. This history, composed by them, interpreted by scholars today, can be understood as moments that seem fixed, but were nonetheless subject to endless reworking, contrastive repetition, and selective forgetting.

For more information: contact@fab-antique.fr