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Karl Andreas Taube
Karl Taube, American anthropologist and archeologist, 2022.
Born	September 14, 1957
Parent	Henry Taube

Karl Andreas Taube (born September 14, 1957)  is an American Mesoamericanist, Mayanist, iconographer and ethnohistorian, known for his publications and research into the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. He is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, University of California, Riverside. In 2008 he was named the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences distinguished lecturer.

Family background

Karl Taube's father, Canadian-born Henry Taube (d. 2005), whose parents were ethnic Germans, was the recipient of the 1983 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Education

Taube commenced his undergraduate education at Stanford, relocating to Berkeley where he completed a B.A. in Anthropology in 1980. He enrolled in graduate studies in Anthropology at Yale, where he completed his Masters degree in 1983 and Doctorate in 1988. At Yale, Taube studied under several notable Mayanist researchers, including Michael D. Coe, Floyd Lounsbury and the art historian Mary Miller. Taube later co-authored with Miller a well-received encyclopedic work, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. His doctoral dissertation is The Ancient Yucatec New Year Festival: The Liminal Period in Maya Ritual and Cosmology. (Volumes I and II).

Career

Field research undertaken during the course of his career include a number of assignments on archaeological, linguistic and ethnological projects conducted in the Chiapas highlands, Yucatán Peninsula, central Mexico, Honduras and most recently, Guatemala. As of 2003, Taube has served as Project Iconographer for the Proyecto San Bartolo, co-directed by William Saturno and Monica Urquizu. His primary role was to interpret the murals of Pinturas Structure Sub-1, dating to the first century B.C. In 2004, Taube co-directed an archaeological project documenting previously unknown sources of "Olmec Blue" jadeite in eastern Guatemala. Taube has also investigated pre-Columbian sites in Ecuador and Peru.

Themes

Taube's two most important books are "The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan" (1992) and "Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks" (2004). The former one restudied the Maya deities of the three codices and aligned them with the deities of the Classic Period. The two-part study of the San Bartolo murals (2005, 2010), although listing several authors, could be considered his third main publication, in asfar as it concerns the Late-Preclassic iconography of the maize god and the hero Hunahpu.

An early theme examined by Taube concerns the agricultural development and symbolism of Mesoamerica. A prime example of this is his 1983 presentation to the Fifth Palenque Round Table identifying the Maya maize god and resulting in one of his major articles (1985). Taube has also written on the symbolism and deity associations of maize for other cultures, particularly in his brilliant study of "Lightning Celts and Corn Fetishes" (2000) that connects Olmec maize symbolism with the American Southwest.

Underlying much of Taube's work is his interest in inter– and intra-regional exchanges and contacts between Mesoamerica, Aridoamerica and the American Southwest. An example of the latter was already mentioned; to this could be added his influential 2004 article on the so-called "Flower Mountain", turning on concepts of life, beauty, and Paradise among the Classic Maya.

Taube also researched the interactions between Teotihuacan, a dominant center in Mexico's plateau region during the Classic era of Mesoamerican chronology, and contemporary Maya polities.

Following Taube's sixtieth birthday in 2017, his collected articles in Mesoamerican, especially Mayan, iconography have begun to appear with the Precolumbia Mesoweb Press and online.

In May 2023, Taube wrote about the repatriation of an important Olmec monument, an 'Earth monster', looted from the site of Chalcatzingo, Morelos, Mexico.

In July 2023, Taube delivered a series of public lectures at the Institute of Archeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a lecture on Mesoamerican jade in the Forbidden City in Beijing, China.

Notes

1. Date information sourced from Library of Congress Authorities data, via corresponding WorldCat Identities linked authority file (LAF).
2. ^ Board of Regents, UC (2006)
3. Shwartz (2005); see also Coe (1992, p.244).
4. "Taube, Henry (1915–2005)". University of Regina. Archived from the original on March 28, 2010. Retrieved August 30, 2010.
5. ^ Taube, Karl Andreas (May 1988). The ancient Yucatec new year festival: The liminal period in Maya ritual and cosmology. (Volumes I and II) (Thesis). ProQuest 303730973.
6. Coe (1992, p.244).
7. Houston, Stephen; Miller, Mary; Taube, Karl (2021). "MICHAEL D. COE (1929–2019): A LIFE IN THE PAST". Ancient Mesoamerica. 32 (1): 1–15. doi:10.1017/S0956536120000541. S2CID 233873026.
8. Miller & Taube 1993, p. .
9. Taube, Karl A.; Sisson, Virginia B.; Seitz, Russell; Harlow, George E. (2004). "The Sourcing of Mesoamerican Jade: Expanded Geological Reconnaissance in the Motagua Region, Guatemala". In Taube, Karl A.; Oaks, Dumbarton (eds.). Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks. Dumbarton Oaks. pp. 203–220. ISBN 978-0-88402-275-6.
10. Taube, Karl A. (March 2004). "Flower Mountain: Concepts of Life, Beauty, and Paradise among the Classic Maya". Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics. 45: 69–98. doi:10.1086/RESv45n1ms20167622. S2CID 193638131.
11. Taube, Karl (7 June 2023). "Aztec and Maya civilizations are household names – but it's the Olmecs who are the 'mother culture' of ancient Mesoamerica". The Conversation.
12. "【讲座报道】玉在古代中美地区的象征意义——故宫研究院学术讲坛第一〇八讲、玉文化讲坛第十讲" [ The symbolic significance of jade in ancient China and America - Lecture 108 of the Palace Museum Research Institute Academic Lecture and Lecture 10 of the Jade Culture Lecture] (in Chinese).

References

• Board of Regents, UC (2006). "Taube, Karl A". UC Riverside, Faculty Directory. Regents UC. Archived from the original on 2007-11-01. Retrieved 2007-01-11.
• Coe, Michael D. (1992). Breaking the Maya Code. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05061-9. OCLC 26605966.
• Miller, Mary; Taube, Karl (1993). The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05068-6. OCLC 27667317.
• Shwartz, Mark (November 17, 2005). "Henry Taube, recipient of Nobel Prize in chemistry, dead at 89". Stanford Report. Stanford University. Retrieved 2007-01-11.
• Taube, Karl (1985). "The Classic Maya Maize God: A Reappraisal" (PDF). In Virginia M. Fields (volume ed.) (ed.). Fifth Palenque Round Table, 1983. Merle Greene Robertson (general ed.) (Online publication:November 2003 ed.). Monterey, CA: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute. Retrieved 2007-01-12.

External links

• "Google Scholar Profile of Karl Taube". Google Scholar. 26 January 2023.

Archaeological tours

Taube leads educational journeys for Far Horizons Archaeological and Cultural trips

• Taube's tour page Karl Taube

• Mesoamerican archaeologists
• Mesoamerican anthropologists
• Mayanists
• Andean scholars
• American Mesoamericanists
• American anthropologists
• University of California, Riverside faculty
• 1957 births
• Living people
• Teotihuacan scholars
• 20th-century Mesoamericanists
• 21st-century Mesoamericanists
• Stanford University alumni
• University of California, Berkeley alumni
• Yale University alumni
• American people of German descent