{"id":24,"date":"2022-07-17T03:54:27","date_gmt":"2022-07-17T03:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/richsandoval\/?page_id=24"},"modified":"2026-01-29T22:14:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T22:14:20","slug":"welcome","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.msudenver.edu\/richsandoval\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am an Associate Professor of Anthropology for the Department of Sociology and Anthropology<\/a> at Metropolitan State University of Denver. I earned my PhD in Linguistics<\/a> with a certificate in Culture, Language, and Social Practice<\/a> from the University of Colorado Boulder. As a linguistic anthropologist and educator, I focus on multimodal forms of linguistic expression and discourse. I do so from a variety of perspectives \u2013 sociocultural, interactional, historical \u2013 and always with an eye to how language intersects with other areas of meaning making (e.g., symbolic art, design, mathematics). <\/span>As such, I engage with many sub- and allied fields of linguistic anthropology, including discourse analysis, gesture studies, and epigraphy. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My research specifically involves Hand Talk and other traditional signed-language practices of Indigenous America, focusing on how sign-based and speech-based elements are combined within linguistically coherent expressions. I am currently examining this linguistic bimodalism<\/i> within Ancient Maya texts, where (speech-based) hieroglyphs are accompanied by textual hand signs (which are held by depicted figures). In Sandoval (2025), I spearheaded the initial decipherment of these Ancient Maya hand signs and demonstrated how the hieroglyphic script and hand-sign script are textually integrated components of a beautifully complex Mayan scribal tradition. My previous work focused on describing the sign-speech linguistic bimodalism of Arapaho (an Algonquian language of North America’s Great Plains).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Decipherment of Ancient Maya Textual Hand Signs<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

Research Article<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

Sandoval, R. (2025) \u201cThe Ancient Maya Script of Hand Forms Embedded in Figural Art: A Decipherment of Numerals Signed by the Rulers of Altar Q.<\/strong>\u201d <\/span>Transactions of the Philological Society, <\/span><\/i>123 (2): 350-389<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Public\u00a0<\/strong>Scholarship<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

Sandoval, R. \u201cContinuing the Decipherment of Ancient Maya Textual Hand Signs: Altar Q and Beyond<\/strong>.\u201d <\/span>The Aztlander: Voice of the Ancient Americas<\/span><\/i>, 6 (1)<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n