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About the White Bone Dragon name

David Freidel says:
Phil -- The Zac Bak Nachan of Palenque is now normally deciphered as the "White Bone Centipede" but the concept we talked about, the great centipede maw of the world where the sun goes in at dusk in the west, and the other maw where the sun emerges at dawn, that idea is alive and well. The "bearded dragon" is a working term used extensively by the iconographers specializing in painted vases, especially Justin Kerr. That entity is, in my view, iconographically linked to the centipede maw creature in those instances where the creature has the characteristic double fang of the centipede (actually its two mandibles.)

About the author:
Phillip Hofstetter is Professor of Art, California State University, East Bay, serves as chair of the Art Department, and teaches in the Multimedia Graduate Program. Phil has led an episodic career in the arts with various work in the theater, documentary television, and major stints at Bay Area art museums. As a multimedia and video producer for archaeological excavations in Yucatán his work has appeared on National Geographic television, the Discovery Channel, in Archaeology Magazine and website, and on the archaeology web-video portal, The Archaeology Channel.

Phil's twenty year photographic journal of Maya ruins began with Merle Greene Robertson at Palenque and continued through 15 field seasons at the Yaxuná Project and the excavations at Chunchucmil, and continuing work at the Kiuic Project, the Xuenkal Project, and the new Yaxuná Project, all in Yucatán. He hopes to soon publish his recordings of the Waká Archaeological Project located in the Petén, Guatemala. His new book, Maya Yucatán - An Artist's Journey, is an account of his experiences among the archaeological projects of Yucatan. Published by the University of New Mexico Press, it is now available in bookstores and online.

Phil has exhibited extensively in Bay Area and international venues, including two solo shows at international museums, one at the Archaeologishes Institut der Universitaet Zürich in Switzerland and the other at the state of Yucatán's Museo Contemporaneo de Arte Ateneo de Yucatán (MACAY) in Mérida.