Karl 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 master's degree in 1983 and doctorate in 1988. 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.

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.

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.