With the great expansion of interest in American arecheology during the last few years there has grown to be a corresponding need and demand for primary textbooks, archeological primers so to speak, which will enable the general reader, without previous knowledge of the science, to understand its several branches. With this end is view, the author has prepared this volume. In the limited space available it would have been impossible to present a detailed picture of the Maya civilization, nor indeed is this essential to the purpose of the book. It has been thought advisable, however, to precede the general discussion of the hieroglyphs with a brief review of the habitat, history, customs, government, and religion of the ancient Maya, so that the reader may gather a general idea of the remarkable people whose writing and calendar he is about to study (adapted from the Preface). Contents: I. The Maya (habitat, History), II The Maya Hieroglyphic writing, III. How the Maya reckoned time (The tonalamatl or 260 day period, the haab or year of 365 days, the Calendar Round, Date Glyphs), IV. Maya arithmetics (Bar and dot numerals, several methods of numeration, the 5 steps of solving Maya numerals), V.The Inscriptions, VI. The Codices, Tables and Illustrations.