In 1970 she traveled with her husband, David Schele, to photograph Mesoamerican monuments in
Yucatán on behalf of the University. An obligatory visit to
Palenque the next summer turned into a 12-day stay spent drawing and studying Maya architecture. Fascinated by the art, Schele decided to investigate the culture and history of the ancient people who had created the city. Mentored by
Merle Greene Robertson, Schele worked with
Peter Mathews and Floyd Loundsbury to decipher a major section of the list of Palenque kings, presenting her work in the 1973 conference
Mesa Redonda de Palenque, organized by Robertson. This meeting established the previously unknown Linda as a major figure in the Maya studies, not only of art and history, but also of dirt archaeology and epigraphy, and her work stimulated several later discoveries, by herself and others. In 1975, Schele was invited to the Second International Archaeoastronomy Conference at Colgate to present an exploratory paper on Palenque
hierophanies and their link to emblem and skull variant glyphs, which she later published in 1977. A strong supporter of collaborative scholarship, Schele became a Fellow in pre-Columbian Studies at
Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., in 1975. Alongside Peter Mathews; David Kelley; and one of her longtime mentors, Floyd Lounsbury, she participated in a series of miniconferences at Dumbarton Oaks which pushed further developing and refining of the Palenque series and also opened new epigraphic frontiers. She focused on the study of word ordering in Maya inscriptions for the next two years there. Still attending graduate school, Schele founded the Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop in Texas in 1977 which consisted of 21 consecutive seminars concerning Maya hieroglyphic writing and introduced more people intrigued by the Maya field than many other books from that time that were considered "popular". Twenty years later, the workshop expanded into what is known as the Maya Meetings at Texas, and includes a symposium of research papers by major scholars and the Forum on Hieroglyphic Writing. By this time in her life, Schele realized her destiny as a
Mayanist; she enrolled as a graduate student in
Latin American Studies at the University of Texas shortly before resigning from her position at South Alabama. She was awarded a Doctorate in Latin American studies by the
University of Texas in 1980. She continued her teaching career there, in the department of Art/Art History. At the time of her death, she was the John D. Murchison Regents Professor of Art in the department. Schele joined the
Copán Mosaics Project in the mid 1980s, working with
David Stuart, Barbara Fash, and Nikolai Grube on the texts of that site. In 1986, Schele and Stuart identified
Copan's dynastic founder, K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’. Shortly after, she began a related series called the
Copán Notes, reports on epigraphy and iconography, which were aimed at rapid dissemination of information amongst Maya scholars. In 1986, Schele co-curated a ground breaking exhibition and catalog of Maya art, "The Blood of Kings: A New Interpretation of Maya Art", with
Mary Miller, a project initiated by
InterCultura and the
Kimbell Art Museum, where it opened in 1986, and the two co-authored the catalog to the exhibition, which was published under the title "The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art". The exhibition spoke of an obsession with royal descent, of incessant warfare, and of bloody sacrifice and self-mutilation which was inconsistent with the models proposed by previous generations of Mayanists. According to
Michael D. Coe, the catalog presented by Schele and Miller "might as well stand as the most influential book on the Maya published in the past half-century." She also began taking an interest in the culture of the contemporary Maya. For a decade beginning 1988, she organized 13 workshops, along with
Nikolai Grube and
Frederico Fahsen, on hieroglyphic writing for them in
Guatemala and
Mexico. Michael D. Coe claims that "Linda's most important contribution to Maya scholarship" is represented in her book ''Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path'' published in 1993 with David Freidel and Joy Parker. ==Death==