Sylvanus Griswold Morley A Life in Archaeology and Elsewhere

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1 Sylvanus Griswold Morley A Life in Archaeology and Elsewhere By Jason S. Shapiro Sylvanus Morley next to Stela F, Quiriguá, Guatemala, Photograph by Jesse Nusbaum. Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Neg. No

2 Sylvanus Griswold Morley ( ) has been cited as a possible model for Steven Spielberg s Indiana Jones. Whether or not that questionable claim stands, Morley remains a compelling, enigmatic, and controversial figure. In 1949 the prominent Mayan archaeologist J. Eric Thompson wrote an obituary in the American Anthropologist for Morley, who had recently died at the age of sixty-five. 1 Thompson had been associated with Morley for more than twenty years, as both a friend and a professional collaborator. In his obituary, Thompson summarized Morley s biographical details, but devoted most of his words to Morley s career as one of the best-known, most creative, and hardest-working Mayan archaeologists of his generation.

3 Although Thompson eventually eclipsed Morley to become the most influential Mayanist of the first half of the twentieth century, the men remained close and were jointly responsible for formulating and popularizing the view that the Maya constituted the earliest complex civilization in Mesoamerica, and one that strongly influenced the evolution of virtually all subsequent Mesoamerican civilizations. In a presumably unintentional understatement, Thompson wrote, Maya archaeology is immensely indebted to Morley. 2 Thompson was correct, even though many of Morley s interpretations of Mayan archaeology and the nature of Mayan society largely have been superseded by the work of subsequent generations of archaeologists. It is perhaps too easy today to critique Morley and Thompson s incorrect view that the Maya were a unified, peaceful theocracy whose astronomer priests lived in mostly empty ceremonial centers whence they charted the movements of stars and planets in order to understand the passage of time. Rather, it is important to acknowledge that those first generations of Mayanists had few reliable sources of information and no reliable dating techniques to help them in their efforts to uncover and explain three thousand years of Mayan cultural evolution. I like to think that Thompson, Morley, and other archaeologists who worked in the aftermath of World War I s carnage wanted to believe that somewhere in the world there was a society of good and gentle people who did not rely on warfare to settle disputes. Their initial archaeological findings seemed to support that view, and so they continued to find what they were looking for until overwhelming contrary evidence suggested a Mayan world full of political intrigue, dynastic competition, and warfare. Reading Morley s obituary today, one is struck by what Thompson chose not to include. Aside from one cursory mention, virtually nothing was noted concerning Morley s life and work in Santa Fe. Sylvanus Morley came to Santa Fe in 1907 at the behest of Edgar Lee Hewett and lived and worked here off and on for the next forty years. Morley was, by any measure, a prominent Santa Fean, not only because of his civic engagement, including membership in the local Masonic Lodge and prolific contributions to El Palacio magazine, but also because of his contributions to Southwest archaeology, and to the iconic phenomenon that began with architecture and morphed into what became Santa Fe Style. More significantly, Thompson made no mention of one of the most unusual and controversial aspects of Morley s life, his service for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) as a spy during the First World War. This aspect of Morley s life was the subject of a comprehensive and scholarly study published about ten years ago by two historians at New Mexico State University, in which they lauded Morley for what they considered his patriotic service under extraordinarily difficult conditions. 3 Indeed, the authors label him the best secret agent that the United States produced during World War I. 4 By the time A group of young archaeologists in their galvanized shack living quarters in Quiriguá, Guatemala, Sylvanus Morley is center left, and Jesse Nusbaum is center right (the others are not identified). Photograph by Jesse Nusbaum. Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Neg. No El Palacio

4 ... one of the most unusual and controversial aspects of Morley s life, his service for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) as a spy during the First World War. of his death, much of the story of Morley s work on behalf of ONI, as well as the subsequent furor that it engendered, was known, and so one might logically conclude that this omission from Morley s obituary was a deliberate attempt by Thompson to sidestep perhaps the most provocative aspect of his friend s life. In revisiting Morley s life and work here, I m going to be in a sense the anti Eric Thompson, because while I will discuss Morley s work as a Mayanist, I also wish to consider Morley s enduring contributions to life in Santa Fe, as well as to what has resurfaced as an ongoing controversy, namely, when or even whether it is appropriate for social scientists to use their professional research as a guise for covert activities. The Student Finds His Way The least controversial part of this story involves Morley s early life and education. He was born on June 7, 1883, in Chester, Pennsylvania, the eldest of six children. His father was a chemistry teacher at what was then Pennsylvania Military College (PMC). 5 Morley moved with his family to Colorado when he was ten years old and completed his secondary education in Colorado Springs. At some point during his time in Colorado, Morley developed an interest in archaeology an interest his father tried to dissuade. (Some things do not change, and the field of archaeology has never been one in which practitioners could make much money.) Morley followed his father s advice and enrolled in PMC and in 1904 earned a degree in civil engineering. Morley had not forgotten his passion, and immediately after graduating from PMC he enrolled in Harvard University s undergraduate program in archaeology. F. W. Putnam, director of the Peabody Museum, redirected Morley s initial interest away from Egyptology and onto the relatively undeveloped field of Mayan archaeology. The early twentieth century was a period in which the discipline of archaeology was still in its infancy, and most of the focus was still on Old World civilizations: Greece, Rome, and particularly Egypt and the Middle East. Institutions such as Harvard were anxious to develop an archaeology of the Americas as a counterweight to the existing Old World focus, and within a relatively short period Morley would be at the forefront of that movement. As an illustration of this comparative viewpoint, a report of a lecture given by Morley in Santa Fe regarding his work at Chichén Itzá stated, The monuments described and pictured could be compared with those of classic Greece and Rome. 6 The Mayanist Morley graduated from Harvard in 1907 and began a very peripatetic year. First he traveled to the Yucatán Peninsula, where he visited a number of major Mayan sites, including Chichén Itzá, and then proceeded to Oaxaca, where he visited the ruins at Mitla and Monte Albán. Present-day visitors to many of these sites travel along modern and well-marked highways, and it is sometimes difficult to appreciate the nature of early twentieth-century travel along narrow dirt roads hacked out of the jungle, or in some cases, traveling where there were no roads at all. Early in his career Morley developed an interest in epigraphy, the decipherment of ancient symbols and writing. Although he was not the first person to consider how understanding Mayan hieroglyphics might be the key to actually reading about the Maya in their own words, he devoted much of his professional life to that endeavor. 7 Upon Morley s return to the United States, he accepted a position at one of Edgar Lee Hewett s archaeology field schools. 8 That summer Morley worked with Hewett, Alfred Vincent Kidder, Jesse Nusbaum, and other budding Southwestern archaeologists at several sites, most notably Puyé, on Santa Clara Pueblo. Although Hewett has been criticized for devoting more energy towards developing an institutional empire than he did towards the developing science of archaeology, he was a tireless promoter of archaeology for the public, and he envisioned Puye as a site where people could visit and learn something about Ancestral Puebloan culture. Hewett wrote, My idea would be to put on a big [work] force, clear out as much of it as possible... and make a show ruin of it. 9 Hewett is important to Morley s story because Hewett not only supported Morley but also infused him with the bigpicture concept of archaeology for whom? This idea of public education through a combination of scholarly lectures and visits to restored sites made an impact on Morley and was some- El Palacio 59

5 thing that stayed with him throughout his life. In this vein, Eric Thompson observed in Morley s obituary that he (Morley) had a burning desire to sell the public on the Maya. 10 Morley returned to the Yucatán in 1909 and began the first of what would become forty consecutive field seasons studying Mayan sites. Aside from the physical dangers and very basic living conditions, Morley was often ill with malaria or other tropical fevers. The fact that he continued with this work is a tribute to his focus and determination, since he was not a robust man, perhaps five feet eight inches tall and weighing 110 pounds. The one thing that always impressed observers, however, was Morley s almost boundless energy and his ability to concentrate on the most detailed inscriptions for weeks or months under the most difficult conditions. Beginning in 1910, Morley began three years of study under the auspices of Hewett and the School of American Archaeology at the site of Quiriguá, located in southeastern Guatemala on land owned by the United Fruit Company. Morley s work at Quiriguá resulted in one of his earliest publications, an article that was noteworthy because of its unusual approach. Instead of merely describing what could be empirically observed, as most archaeologists did at that time, Morley took a broader contextual view by attempting to explain as well as to describe what had been uncovered. He also suggested a preliminary site chronology based on his deciphering of carved hieroglyphic dates. 11 In 1915 Morley secured a position as a research associate for the Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC, essentially making him the director for all of the Carnegie s sponsored explorations in a huge region that included the Yucatán, Guatemala, and Honduras. Among other things, Morley proposed a plan to not only excavate and study, but also to restore much of the newly accessible site of Chichén Itzá in order to encourage an early version of what we now call cultural tourism. Westerners had first become acquainted with Chichén Itzá through the travel writings and lectures of John Lloyd Stephens in 1848, and although several archaeologists had worked at Chichén Itzá prior to Morley, it was his project that actually cleared and reconstructed a substantial portion of the site. Morley, Thompson, and other early archaeologists focused on the impressive architecture of civic-ceremonial centers such as Chichén Itzá without even recognizing that there were numerous small house mounds virtually under their feet. It was not until subsequent archaeological surveys that people realized the size and population density of Mayan cities was much greater than had been assumed. 60 El Palacio

6 One of Morley s great strengths as a scholar was his attention to detail and precision in his recording of Mayan hieroglyphs. Unfortunately, this focus on data collection led him in the wrong direction with regard to the meaning of the noncalendrical inscriptions. Many early Mayanists, including the young Morley, had hypothesized that these inscriptions might contain historical or genealogical data relating to royal lineages. Later in his career he changed his view and emphatically stated: The Maya inscriptions treat primarily of chronology, astronomy,... and religious matters. They are in no sense records of personal glorification and self-laudation like the inscriptions of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia. They tell no story of kingly conquests, recount no deed of imperial achievement; they neither praise nor exalt, glorify nor aggrandize, indeed they are so utterly impersonal, so completely non individualistic, that it is even probably that the name-glyphs of specific men and women were never recorded upon Maya monuments. 12 OPPOSITE: Edgar Lee Hewett s staff from El Rito de los Frijoles, in what is now Bandelier National Monument, ca Standing, left to right: W. W. Robbins, Donald Beauregard, John Harrington, F. W. Hodge, Hewett, Neil M. Judd, Maud Woy, Barbara Freire-Marreco. Seated, left to right: Sylvanus Morley, Kenneth Chapman, J. P. ( Jack ) Adams, Jesse Nusbaum, Nathan Goldsmith, and Junius Henderson. Unattributed photograph. Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Neg. No BELOW: Sylvanus Morley stands below a ring in a ball court, Chichén Itzá, ca Photograph by Jesse Nusbaum. Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Neg. No Unfortunately, Morley could not have been more wrong, since developments subsequent to his death revealed that the elements dismissed by Morley were precisely the kinds of things that the Maya carved on their monuments and buildings. Morley was never able to fully decipher the Mayan writing system, or he would have understood that the Maya were very much like other civilizations, namely, they recorded a great deal of what has been identified as elite-sponsored, promotional propaganda about the affairs of kings and queens births, deaths, marriages, conquests, and various other deeds typically associated with royalty. In point of fact, Mayan writing is a complex system that involves more than 800 symbols, divided into two types of highly stylized glyphs. There are logograms that are akin to Egyptian hieroglyphs in the sense that each symbol stands for a particular object or concept. In addition, the Maya used syllabic glyphs in which each symbol represented a phonetic sound. It was the latter category of symbols that Morley and his compatriots were never able to decode. The Santa Fe Visionary When Morley was not working in the Yucatán or Guatemala, he always returned to Santa Fe, where he became part of a small group of men who strongly influenced the design and development of the city. In 1912 Morley, along with Edgar Lee Hewett, was appointed to the City of Santa Fe Planning Board. Although Morley had no formal training in the field of city planning, he had earned a degree in civil engineering from PMC, a credential that gave him some credibility when making recommendations. In an effort to reverse the city s declining economic fortunes, Mayor Arthur Seligman wanted to reimagine Santa Fe as a tourist destination. 13 El Palacio 61

7 The issue of Morley s spying activities during the First World War is complex and should be considered within its historical context. Following the tenets of the turn-of-the-century City Beautiful movement, the Planning Board produced a comprehensive plan that sought to emphasize (and capitalize upon) Santa Fe s unique architectural and cultural heritage. It was around this time that people began referring to Santa Fe as The City Different, although it is unclear who first used that term. The response to Mayor Seligman s concerns adopted by the Planning Board was a unified building style which Morley called Spanish Pueblo Revival that incorporated iconic local architectural elements, including earth-tone colors, flat roofs, rounded edges, vigas, canales, and stucco covering, to mimic traditional adobe exteriors. Santa Feans were encouraged through tax credits to adopt this new, uniform, local style, but failing that, the city intended to impose it within the downtown historic area. When one considers that the population of Santa Fe in 1912 was only around 5,000 people, this was clearly an ambitious undertaking, and yet it took hold. Chris Wilson, in The Myth of Santa Fe, argues that although there were a number of contributors to the genesis of Santa Fe Style, it was Morley s meticulous attention to detail, together with his own remodeling of the historic Roque Lobato house, that galvanized the movement. 14 Agent 53 The issue of Morley s spying activities during the First World War is complex and should be considered within its historical context. Although it may seem far-fetched today, there was a genuine fear among many Americans that the 1910 Mexican Revolution would generate political instability throughout Latin America and encourage interference by European nations, much like France s ill-fated involvement with Emperor Maximilian in the 1860s. In addition, the outbreak of World War I in 1914 created anxieties among government officials and business leaders regarding German intentions to establish U-boat supply bases along the Gulf Coast of Mexico and Central America. These fears were not entirely unreasonable inasmuch as German U-boats were soon in the process of sinking thousands of tons of allied shipping within the Caribbean Sea. The highly provocative 1917 Zimmerman telegram did not exactly dampen these fears. The telegram was sent by German foreign secretary Zimmerman and proposed that Mexico align itself with Germany in a war against the United States for which Mexico would receive territory comprised of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. Mexico actually evaluated the proposal before rejecting it as militarily and politically impractical. It was within this context of anxiety that Morley approached the Office of Naval Intelligence to volunteer his services. ONI recognized his potential value, and Morley was soon commissioned as an ensign in the navy and given the identifying moniker of Agent He spent parts of 1917 and 1918 traveling extensively throughout Central America, talking with local residents and European expatriots, surveying coastal areas that might offer good locations for U-boat supply bases, and filing numerous reports with ONI regarding the identities of German nationals and the actions of a variety of Latin American politicians. Morley surveyed parts of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras, and was precise in his observations and quite clear in his assessments. For the most part, he concluded that there were few, if any, areas suitable for U-boat supply bases. The combination of mangrove swamps, sandbars, and obvious shoreline visibility suggested that any potential German plans were unrealistic, and that the earlier fears were probably unfounded. Morley s own findings did not dissuade him, and he continued his activities through to the end of the war and even thereafter as he continued to file intelligence reports until Although some people may have had second thoughts about using science as a cover for spying, Morley had no apparent reservations. He was always a vocal advocate in favor of American political and military intervention in Latin American affairs. Morley believed that if Mexico, or indeed any country, could not suppress domestic disturbances and maintain internal order, then it was incumbent upon other nations, especially the United States, to intervene and use force to establish necessary order. 17 To that end, Morley publicly stated that the United States should use the Monroe Doctrine to establish stable protectorates among the unstable nations of Central America El Palacio

8 RIGHT: Sylvanus Morley s sketch of hieroglyphic steps, east, middle, and west doorways, Quiriguá, Guatemala, Photograph by Jesse Nusbaum. Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Neg. No FOLLOWING PAGE: Sylvanus Griswold Morley in later life. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Neg. No Considering that Morley had begun doing fieldwork in Mesoamerica when Theodore Roosevelt was president, and the dual pillars of imperialism and jingoism were in full flower, Morley s American-supremacist attitudes were nothing unusual among the educated and political elite, including members of Ivy League academia. Keep in mind that both Morley s employer, the Carnegie Foundation, and the influential United Fruit Company were not only aware of Morley s activities but complicit in them as they provided cover for him, and in the case of United Fruit, allowed him to use their wireless stations to transmit official reports to ONI. 19 Following the war in 1919, but while Morley was still engaged in clandestine activities on behalf of the ONI, Franz Boas, the dean of American anthropology, published a letter in The Nation magazine excoriating several scholars who used their positions as cover for spying on behalf of the government. A portion of Boas s letter follows: A soldier whose business is murder as a fine art, a diplomat whose calling is based on deception and secretiveness, a politician whose very life consists in compromises with his conscience, a business man whose aim is personal profit within the limits allowed by a lenient law such may be excused if they set patriotic deception above common everyday decency and perform services as spies. They merely accept the code of morality to which modern society still conforms. Not so the scientist. The very essence of his life is the service of truth. We all know scientists who in private life do not come up to the standard of truthfulness, but who, nevertheless, would not consciously falsify the results of their researches. It is bad enough if we have to put up with these, because they reveal a lack of strength of character that is liable to distort the results of their work. A person, however, who uses science as a cover for political spying, who demeans himself to pose before a foreign government as an investigator and asks for assistance in his alleged researches in order to carry on, under this cloak, his political machinations, prostitutes science in an unpardonable way and forfeits the right to be classed as a scientist. 20 Boas did not name names, but indicated that at least four anthropologists (including Morley) had been involved in spying during the war, all the while claiming to be doing scientific research. 21 Boas was unsparing in his denunciations, in part because he found such activities morally abhorrent and inconsistent with the goals of anthropology, but also, I believe, because of personal pique, since a number of prominent anthropologists had known about the spying and had never told Boas what was going on. In response, several of Morley s friends and associates strongly denounced Boas, almost as if he had been transformed into the anthropological concept of the other. Boas was a European Jew in a discipline that to that point had been dominated by wealthy, educated easterners. Furthermore, he was an acknowledged sympathizer with imperial Germany, the country where he had grown up and been educated. Finally, Boas had not served in the allied military during the war, but he had chal- El Palacio 63

9 lenged much of the conventional wisdom about what the discipline of anthropology was supposed to be, including how basic research should be conducted. Despite his suspect status, Boas was merely articulating his belief that the practice of anthropology, by its very nature, requires researchers to ingratiate themselves to local communities and ask intrusive questions about sometimes sensitive cultural subjects. Boas believed that the ethical obligations of anthropologists were inconsistent with the practice of spying and might even put innocent lives at risk. Boas s letter created a firestorm that came to a head during a meeting of the governing council of the American Anthropological Association on December 10, Neil Judd, a prominent archaeologist and a friend of Morley, introduced a resolution arguing that Boas s letter was unjustified and that Boas deserved to be censured for demeaning the work of patriotic Americans. 22 Judd s measure passed by a vote of in what was a highly politicized and personalized contest. 23 Boas was removed from the governing council of the AAA, the very organization whose reputation he had worked so hard to create. Boas was not without some vocal defenders, but ultimately, Boas lost and the spies won. 24 Unbeknownst to the participants, this issue would be revisited. Even making allowances for the prevailing attitudes of a hundred years ago, and even accepting the potential for war with both Germany and Mexico, as an anthropologist and archaeologist I find myself generally in agreement with Boas s assessment of Morley s activities. The issue is not whether Morley was an effective spy or a loyal patriot but that he used his status as a professional archaeologist as credible cover for spying. If Morley had desired, he undoubtedly could have secured a position within one of America s embassies or consulates in Latin America, or perhaps even obtained employment with the United Fruit Company. Politicians, government employees, and even businessmen operate in a different realm than do social scientists, whose job requires them to obtain the trust of informants in order to obtain information. It is difficult enough to insure that informants understand the rules of informed consent as well as the uses to which their information could be put, without considering the possibility of causing these people genuine harm by forwarding that information to government agencies. By using his status as an archaeologist to shield the true nature of his activities, Morley not only endangered his own life, but he put the lives of other field researchers at risk, both during and after the war. This critique is not merely a speculative kind of what if parlor game, because the ethical obligations of social scientists constitute a longrunning conundrum that has resurfaced with a bit of a vengeance. 25 In 2006, in the midst of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Defense Department initiated a program designed to increase cultural awareness among combat troops. The program was called HTS (Human Terrain Systems), and according to the mission statement on its website, the Human Terrain System develops, trains, and integrates a social science based research and analysis capability to support operationally relevant decisionmaking, to develop a knowledge base, and to enable sociocultural understanding across the operational environment. 26 That is military jargon for a program that embeds social scientists, primarily anthropologists, but also sociologists, historians, and political scientists, within front-line units. Unlike Morley and his cohorts, these social scientists wear uniforms and carry weapons, but their primary assignment is to conduct surveys, discern local attitudes and patterns of behavior, and put this information into a useful cultural context. These activities are essentially what social scientists are trained to do conduct research and collect data except for the fact that this information is used by the military to make it more effective at what it does, namely, eliminate the bad guys, hold and secure territory, and conduct operations with a minimum number of casualties to friendly combat forces and noncombatant civilians. Not surprisingly, the HTS program has become embroiled in the same issues faced by Morley: the ethics of anthropologists using their professional status to secure information for other than research purposes. The fundamental ethical consideration of Do no harm, which is a hallmark of the discipline of anthropology, is once again at the forefront. These questions are not mere abstractions, because at least three HTS social scientists have been killed in combat. 27 On October 31, 2007, in response to a heated debate, the Executive Board of 64 El Palacio

10 the American Anthropological Association (AAA) published a statement criticizing HTS as conflicting with the AAA s Code of Ethics. 28 More specifically, the AAA Board wrote: In the context of a war that is widely recognized as a denial of human rights and based on faulty intelligence and undemocratic principles, the Executive Board sees the HTS project as a problematic application of anthropological expertise, most specifically on ethical grounds. We have grave concerns about the involvement of anthropological knowledge and skill in the HTS project. The Executive Board views the HTS project as an unacceptable application of anthropological expertise. It would seem as if the AAA has come full circle and embraced the very position for which Franz Boas was censured when he expressed similar views regarding the wartime work of Sylvanus Morley and several other anthropologists. Was Morley an archaeologist who engaged in some spying on behalf of his government, or was he a spy who managed to do a lot of archaeology? Given the scope and length of his professional work life, the former would seem to be the more accurate assessment, and yet there is a passage in a letter that Morley wrote to his superiors in 1919 that suggests one small counterpoint. In trying to make a case for continuing his spying in Latin America after the war, Morley wrote, As you know, ever since taking up my work with you, I have maintained at the same time my connections with the Carnegie Institution, and indeed I have had to carry on numerous archaeological excavations during this period in order to better facilitate the other work (emphasis added). 29 The other work to which Morley referred was his spying. This certainly is an odd comment that leaves one guessing as to Morley s view of his own potential legacy. I find it ironic that the portion of Morley s career for which he is best known, namely his archaeological work among Mayan ruins in the Yucatán Peninsula and other parts of Mesoamerica, largely has been supplanted, yet his lesser-known work as a spy for ONI remains contentious and part of the ongoing discussion about the societal role of archaeology and the ethical responsibilities of its practitioners. n Jason S. Shapiro, PhD, lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and is the author of Before Santa Fe: The Archaeology of the City Different (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2008). His essay Statehood for Whom? New Mexico s Journey to Universal Voting Rights for Women appeared in the fall 2012 issue of El Palacio. 1. American Anthropologist 51 (1949): Ibid., Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler, The Archaeologist Was a Spy: Sylvanus Morley and the Office of Naval Intelligence (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003). 4. Ibid., The institution known as Pennsylvania Military College (PMC) began as Widener College, founded in Between 1892 and 1972, the institution was called Pennsylvania Military College. After 1972 it was renamed Widener University. Widener_University. 6. El Palacio 35 (11, August 15, 1928): In 1562 Catholic Bishop Fray Diego de Landa burned thousands of Mayan folding books, known as codices, because he viewed them as superstition and lies of the devil. Only a few such codices have survived, but fortunately the Maya also carved tens of thousands of inscriptions on stone monuments and buildings, giving epigraphers a continuing supply of raw material with which to work. 8. Hewett had sent letters to several institutions, including Harvard University, seeking students interested in learning archaeological field methods. Both Morley and his fellow student, Alfred Vincent Kidder, responded and were accepted by Hewett. James Snead, Ruins and Rivals: The Making of Southwest Archaeology (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001), Ibid., American Anthropologist 51 (1949): Sylvanus G. Morley, Excavations at Quirgua, Guatemala, National Geographic Magazine 24 (1913): See also Gordon R. Willey and Jeremy A. Sabloff, A History of American Archaeology, 3rd edition (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1993), T. Patrick Culbert, Maya Civilization (Washington: St. Remy Press and Smithsonian Institution Books, 1993), 72. Morley s focus upon Mayan chronology echoed some of his earliest archaeological work in the Southwest, where his associations with Nels Nelson, Alfred Vincent Kidder, and others led to collaborative efforts that emphasized the importance of establishing accurate chronologies in order to fully understand the cultural evolution of prehistoric societies. Snead, Ruins and Rivals, Chris Wilson, The Myth of Santa Fe (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), Ibid., See also Sylvanus Morley, Santa Fe Architecture, Old Santa Fe 2 (3, January 1915). 15. Harris and Sadler, Archaeologist, Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., The Nation 109 (2842, December 20, 1919). 21. In addition to Morley, the other three anthropologists to whom Boas obliquely referred were Herbert Spinden, H. E. Mechling, and J. Alden Mason. See Thomas Carl Patterson, A Social History of Anthropology in the United States (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001), Harris and Sadler, Archaeologist, The resolution censoring Boas was not rescinded until David H. Price, The Shameful Business: Leslie Spier on the Censure of Franz Boas, HAN 27 (2, 2001): Ibid., See, e.g., David Price, Anthropologists as Spies, The Nation (November 20, 2000). 26. Human Terrain Systems, Ibid.; see Memoriam section. 28. American Anthropological Association Board Resolution, EB_Resolution_ pdf. 29. Harris and Sadler, Archaeologist, 281. El Palacio 65