Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs (Wayeb Workshop Handbook)
by Harri Kettunen, Christophe Helmke · Wayeb (European Association of Mayanists)
The single best free route from reading about the Maya to reading the Maya. Handbook used at the European Maya Conference hieroglyphic workshops since 2002, now in its twentieth edition. Works through the syllabary, logograms, verb morphology and Long Count dates with sign catalogues, exercises and glossaries.
More resources on Aztecs, Maya & Inca
Mesoweb
Archive of Mesoamerican scholarship: complete runs of The PARI Journal and other journals, excavation reports, epigraphic notes, out-of-print monographs and site photography, all free to download. It shows what real excavation and decipherment output looks like. The working reference site Maya specialists cite.
El primer nueva coronica y buen gobierno (Guaman Poma digital edition)
The Andean counterpart to the Florentine Codex and the main indigenous-authored source on Inca and early colonial Peru. Balances the Spanish-chronicle bias that dominates Inca narrative history. Digital facsimile of the 1615 illustrated letter to Philip III by Andean author Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala: about 1,200 manuscript pages and 400 drawings on Inca society and colonial abuse, with transcription and scholarly apparatus.
Digital Florentine Codex
Searchable digital edition of Sahagun's 1577 encyclopaedia of Mexica life, compiled with Nahua elders and artists. All twelve books appear with Nahuatl, Spanish and English texts in parallel alongside roughly 2,500 painted images. The most important single source on Mexica culture and on the conquest from the Nahua side, now free and searchable instead of locked behind the twelve-volume Anderson-Dibble print set. Lets a learner read a primary source and see its biases directly.
The Incas (Second Edition)
Synthesis of Andean archaeology, Quechua oral tradition and Spanish administrative records covering Tawantinsuyu's rise, its labour-tax economy, khipu accounting, provincial installations and the conquest, with sustained discussion of how contested the evidence is. The 2nd edition is roughly 40% longer than the first and is where specialists send serious readers; it teaches how Inca history is reconstructed from a state with no alphabetic writing.
The Aztecs (Third Edition)
Archaeological survey of Aztec society built from excavation of ordinary houses and provincial towns as well as Tenochtitlan, testing what Spanish and Nahuatl documents claim about empire, tribute, markets, religion and daily life. Smith constantly shows where the evidence comes from and where archaeology contradicts the conquest-era chronicles, the corrective this topic needs against sacrifice-shock content.
The Maya (Tenth Edition)
The standard one-volume account of Maya civilisation, revised in 2022 with lidar finds such as Aguada Fenix. Runs from early farmers through the Classic collapse to Spanish contact, integrating archaeology, inscriptions and art. The tenth edition (2022, full colour) includes Aguada Fenix and recent decipherment work, which matters because pre-2015 editions predate the lidar revolution.