Graphic and Photographic Documentation - Reed College

This is one of a pair of books by Brunhouse describing the life stories of 15 Maya
explorers and archaeologists who worked from the late 18 th to early 20 th centuries,
their adventures in the Americas and their approaches in Maya studies. This volume,
dealing with the later years, describes the lives of Teobert Maler, Alfred P. Maudslay,
Sylvanus G. Morley, Frederick A. Michell-Hedges, Herbert J. Spinden, William E.
Gates, and Fras Blom.
Relatively little attention is given to the Puuc region. An account is given of the
important discoveries made at Uxmal by Blom and his party in 1930 when carrying out
research and making casts for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago
(p.196). Brunhouse notes that Morley “considered the Governor’s Palace at Uxmal the
finest building in prehispanic America, a view shared by many other people” (p.60). In
the chapter on Spinden, more attention is given to theoretical concepts than in
chapters on the other archaeologists, describing Spinden’s extensive system of
correlation. Brunhouse writes that “he produced a brilliant analysis of the evolution of
styles in A Study of Maya Art which remains a landmark on the subject” (p.95). In the
chapter on Morley, Brunhouse describes the advanced conservation practices of the
Carnegie Institution of Washington (C.I.W.); its “refusal to ask for artifacts which might
be found in the course of excavation”, insisting instead that the C.I.W. “must restrict its
work to excavation and scholarly reports of the result.” “The other policy of the C.I.W.
required faithful restoration of the ancient structures . . . the C.I.W. followed the rigid
policy of utilizing only stones which had fallen from a structure and adding no others.
If modern materials like steel supports were used to preserve a building, they were
hidden from view” (p.67). There is an important bibliography; selective and critical,
listing separately works by and about each of the 7 figures.
The same author’s book, In Search of the Ancient Maya: the First Archaeologists,
published two years before by the same press, describes the lives and careers of 8
different explorer-archaeologists: Antonio del Rio and Guillermo Dupaix, Juan
Galindo, Jean Frédéric Waldeck, John Lloyd Stephens, Charles Étienne Brasseur de
Bourbourg, Augustus Le Plongeon, and Edward H. Thompson.
C
Castleberry, May, ed.
The New World’s Old World: Photographic Views of Ancient America. Published on the
occasion of an exhibition held at the AXA Gallery, New York, May 8 - July 19, 2003.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003.
An excellent chronological survey of photographic images of pre-Hispanic architecture
and man-made landscape features in North, Central, and South America. Examples
include photographs dating from shortly after the invention of photography to the
present day. In her “Introduction”, Castleberry devotes 2 ½ pages to 19 th century
explorer-photographers of Pre-Columbian sites, though without specific mention of the
Puuc region. The book reproduces Maler’s unique 1891-1893 albumen silver prints,
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