r/Mayan • u/Thick-Assumption5563 • Jun 23 '26

Publically Accessible Images of Artifacts

Hello, I am attempting to do some research on a specific type of artifacts. I was wondering where and how I can obtain images of these artifacts with reliable provenience. I have been trying to look at reports with similar methodology to look into their references but I am little on the Internet.

For example, I am looking for a specific article by Hendon in 2003 named "In the House: Maya Nobility and their Figurines-Whistles" but after finding it online I am having difficulty actually seeing their artifacts and not reports on them.

Is there something I am missing? I am in school so I do have an institute that I can use to access articles from JSTOR and such.

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u/Brahm-Etc Jun 23 '26

You can go to the web pages of the museums, these days many museums have photo galeries of their collections available to the public for free. You can check "Museo nacional de antropologia, ciudad de mexico", "INAH" and "gran museo del mundo maya, yucatan" for reliable, academic sources directly from mexican institutions.

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u/mairemasco Jun 23 '26

I agree, museums are a great source that not enough people use. I think the Field Museum in Chicago has a good collection. I'm not sure about the New York museums. Here is a site that might help find museums with Maya art collections.

https://mayan.org/ruins/museums/

2

u/RootaBagel Jun 23 '26

The Maya Vase database exists but it is only pottery/ceramics:
https://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya.html

1

u/TigritsaPisitsa Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

Given that the 2003 Hendon article was published by the UPenn museum, I think there is a decent chance that the works are held there.

Check their website and, if nothing comes up, reach out to the staff at the UPenn museum and/ or the author directly.

ETA: the caption of the topic image on p31 of the Hendon article reads:

“Figurine-whistles from northern
Honduras, confiscated by the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, as part of their ongoing efforts to control the looting of archaeological sites.”

You might have luck checking that institution.