The event opened on December 10, in the Nikolskaya building, at the Institute of Archives and History, where the first Knorozov Center had been located until 2019, when Knorozov Multimedia Center of History and Culture was opened at the initiative of Rector Bezborodov.
Dr. Galina Yershova, Head of the Center, presented it with a replica of a Zapotecan vessel in the shape of a jaguar, a gift from a Mexican art patron Eduardo Cruz.
One of the topics of the Readings was the description of the results of the projects carried out by RSUH experts in Mesoamerica jointly with their foreign colleagues. For instance, this year Dr. Yershova has directed the second fieldwork season, which involved working with petroglyphs in Casa de las Golondrinas (Guatemala). The researchers mapped the site, using GPS tagging. Using the latest method for decoding images, the group documented a large number of new petroglyphic drawings.
Dmitry Belyayev and Segey Vepretsky presented the results of the first Russian archeological digs in El Encanto (Guatemala), proving that the city center was a lot older than previously thought.
In July 2019, the faculty of the Center participated in the 3-D mapping of the monumental sculpture at Dzibanché (Mexico) jointly with experts from Harvard University (US) and National Institute of Archeology and History (Mexico).
Experts from the Ethnographic Museum of Kazan Federal University made a presentation about a yet-unpublished collection of South American ceramics. Their colleagues from the Kunstkamera talked about items pertaining to the culture of the omaguacas.
The participants of the Readings could also see new trace drawings of the petroglyphs found in Amuro-Ussurian territory.
Another presentation dealt with epigraphies of Ancient Greek and Byzantine inscriptions, where a large portion of the text had been lost.
