About

Mallory E. Matsumoto is an Assistant Professor in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on Mesoamerican religions, Maya archaeology, Mesoamerican ethnohistory, Classic Maya hieroglyphs, Mayan languages, and the anthropology of religion and writing. She is engaged in scholarly work that explores the cultural and historical aspects of Mesoamerican civilizations, contributing to the understanding of Maya society and its religious and linguistic practices.

Research topics

• Archaeology
• Geography
• Geology
• Physical geography
• History
• Ancient history

Selected publications

• Sergio Romero, Memorial de Sololá. Ciudad de Guatemala: Universidad Mesoamericana, 2025, 348 pp. (Colección Estudios Mesoamericanos, 8). ISBN: 978-9929-8092-9-1

  Estudios de Cultura Maya · 2026-05-11

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• Narrating Boundary Markers in Early Colonial Highland Guatemala

  Hispanic American Historical Review · 2025-04-29

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  Abstract Establishing and maintaining borders inherently relies on human relations between those invested in the landscape. As such, boundary records document not only territorial limits but the sociopolitical context that supports or contests them. But their practical effectiveness depends on their legibility to authoritative parties. In land titles composed during the first century of Spanish colonialism, K'iche'an Maya authors in highland Guatemala strategically drew on various narrative tools to solve a common problem of justifying territorial claims before Indigenous stakeholders and colonial officials alike. Depending on the situation, they cited naturally occurring or artificially modified border markers, or a mix thereof. They also deployed discursive frameworks that either dehistoricized markers as timeless givens or contextualized them as legitimate products of historical events. By documenting conditions in which markers were created and the materiality that sustained them, early colonial K'iche'an land titles reaffirmed the conditions necessary to maintain the boundaries into the future.

  PublisherDOI

• :<i>Decoding the Codex Borgia: Visual Symbols of Time and Space in Ancient Mexico</i>

  Journal of Anthropological Research · 2025-03-01

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• :<i>Memory in Fragments: The Lives of Ancient Maya Sculptures</i>

  West 86th · 2025-03-01

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• Friction in the field: Milpa, missionary, and scales of refusal in 1960s highland Guatemala

  American Anthropologist · 2025-03-16 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This article takes a scalar view of “friction” (Tsing 2005) and “refusal” (Ortner 1995) between ethnography and the archive. The concept of friction was originally formulated in the context of a globalizing world, but friction's perception and experience are highly local. By recurrently destabilizing interactions, friction generates the constant possibility of contestation at the same time that it fosters ongoing renewal and reshuffling of social relations. Refusal, in turn, is shaped by a combination of individual agency and the contextual parameters delimiting any given social interaction. Based on a K'iche’ Maya narrative recorded by Catholic missionary James L. Mondloch in the area of Nahualá, Sololá, Guatemala, I illustrate how refusal not only informs interpretation of the oral history but shaped its 1968 telling. As debate continues over the ethics and logistics of working with legacy fieldwork data, I consider the frictions that anthropologists have to live with when working with archival data and those that we ourselves may generate.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Classic Maya deity concurrence: Brides, gods, and inter-dynastic ritual exchange

  Journal of Anthropological Archaeology · 2024-11-20 · 1 citations

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• IDIOM: A Digital Research Environment for the Documentation and Study of Maya Hieroglyphic Texts and Language

  2024-09-26

  book-chapterOpen access

  Abstract The Maya hieroglyphic script, an indigenous graphic notation system in the Americas, presents a formidable decipherment challenge. Approximately 40 per cent of its approximately one thousand known signs remain elusive owing to limited comprehension of the Classic Mayan language. Spanning modern-day south-eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and western Honduras, the Classic Maya civilization left over ten thousand inscriptions, primarily detailing the lives of political elites. The ‘Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan’ project endeavours to unveil the script’s mysteries via an online text database and dictionary at https://classicmayan.org. Collaborative digital humanities methodologies and tools empower insights into the Maya’s cultural and historical legacy. The project catalogues inscribed artefacts and images in the virtual research environment TextGrid and the ‘Maya Image Archive (MIA)’, enhancing accessibility and collaboration. It further converts Maya hieroglyphic texts into machine-readable XML/TEI format and employs a novel sign classification framework. A new linguistic tool facilitates linguistic analysis and translation, enriching our understanding of Classic Mayan language and culture. Furthermore, the project compiles a vast repository of digitized Maya culture-related images and textual data, accessible online. As of 2024, it focuses on hieroglyphic texts from specific regions, with ongoing transliteration, transcription, and linguistic analysis. This digital approach not only facilitates dynamic Maya script research but also offers a platform for comprehensive source material evaluation and publication.

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• Graphemic Variation in Morphosyntactic Context: The Syllable u in Classic Maya Hieroglyphic Writing

  Topics in Cognitive Science · 2024-11-09 · 1 citations

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  Throughout the long history of Classic Maya hieroglyphs, a logosyllabic writing system used from the late first millennium BCE through the mid-second millennium CE in southern Mesoamerica, the most commonly recorded phonetic value was the syllable u (/ʔu/). With over a dozen different u hieroglyphs, Classic Maya scribes had more options for recording /ʔu/ than any other syllable or logograph. Cognitive approaches to writing systems typically attribute graphemic variation (i.e., alternation between signs with equivalent linguistic value) to semantic differences like animacy or to non-linguistic factors like identity. Distribution of Classic Maya u hieroglyphs, however, suggests that morphosyntactic context influenced which grapheme scribes wrote and when. This case suggests that scribal knowledge of Classic Maya hieroglyphs included ideas about writing's relationship to language. It also highlights the cognitive relevance of morphosyntax for a writing system's users as they differentiate among graphic signs with identical linguistic denotation.

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• Emblem Glyphs

  2024-09-18

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In the Classic Maya (250–900 CE) lowlands, some rulers were identified by so-called emblem glyphs, which designated the bearer as the ‘holy lord’ (k'uhul ajaw) of a given polity. This title differentiated more powerful dynastic centers from subsidiary sites whose rulers did not have an emblem glyph and were instead referred to merely as ‘lord’ (ajaw). Polities ruled by kings with an emblem glyph still engaged in hierarchical relations with each other and could be dominant over or subservient to another polity. Ultimately, however, kingdoms with an emblem glyph of their own maintained their dynastic lineage and identity and thus a baseline level of political self-determination. This contribution considers how hieroglyphic representation of emblem glyphs could express political identity graphically, not just linguistically. The key variable in emblem glyphs is the so-called emblem, the sign or sequence of signs denoting the specific polity. The emblem distinguishes a ‘holy lord’ as belonging to one dynasty as opposed to another; as such, it is the most linguistically or culturally marked component of the titular sequence, since the other components, k'uhul (‘divine, holy’) and ajaw (‘lord’), recurred in all emblem glyphs. Classic Maya scribes consistently maintained the internal arrangement or ordinatio of signs within a given emblem glyph, suggesting that they learned and conveyed emblem glyphs as compositional wholes, not just the sum of individual components. This orthographic practice facilitated quick recognition of the semantically decisive emblem within the sequence. It also indicates that political identity was intrinsically communicated in hieroglyphic composition, at least among scribes and elite readers of their inscriptions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Utilizes a Nitric Oxide Metabolic Pathway to Evade Killing by Neutrophils in the Lung

  2023-05-01

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Frequent coauthors

• A. Scherer

  Brown University

  13 shared

• Stephen Houston

  John Brown University

  12 shared

• Omar Alcover Firpi

  8 shared

• Charles J. Golden

  Children's Hospital of Orange County

  6 shared

• Joshua T. Schnell

  6 shared

• Alejandra Roche Recinos

  Reed College

  6 shared

• Whittaker Schroder

  5 shared

• Morgan Davenport Clark

  Brown University

  4 shared