Paul Tamburro is currently working on a short book on Ancient Mesoamerican writing systems with Professor Stephen D. Houston. The project considers the links between texts, imagery, and orality in Mesoamerica, with a focus on how the Indigenous peoples of the region conceived of scripts and their producers. This work builds on Paul’s recent research on reading and textual performance within the Classic Maya area, and will appear in the Cambridge University Press series, “Cambridge Elements in Writing in the Ancient World.”

Paul has also spent the last two summers excavating at Tikal, Guatemala, where he is a participant in the Proyecto Arqueológico del Sur de Tikal. This past summer, he excavated a structure on Tikal’s South Acropolis and created architectural reconstruction drawings for the project. He hopes to continue this work over the course of summer 2026, and plans to incorporate these reconstructions into future research on the history of archaeological documentation in the Maya area.