Three Visions of the Maya, Three Visions of Mayanists: Maudslay, Proskouriakoff, and Schele

Alfred Maudslay and the Maya: A Biography. By Ian Graham. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. 323 pp., preface, notes, references, index. $39.95 cloth.)

Tatiana Proskouriakoff: Interpreting the Ancient Maya. By Char Solomon. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. xv + 218 pp., preface, acknowledgments, notes, selected writings, bibliography, index. $34.95 cloth.).

Heart of Creation: The Mesoamerican World and the Legacy of Linda Schele. Edited by Andrea Stone. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002. xvii + 340 pp., acknowledgments, 2 appendixes, references, contributors, index. $29.95 paper.)

It is always a tricky business to write about the (academic) ancestors, or even to review those who have written about them. Objectivity for writer and reader cannot be feigned, and one simply accepts embarking on the endeavor clouded by preconceived notions of the subject. You cannot work in the Maya area and be unaware of, uninfluenced by, or without opinion on Alfred Maudslay, Tatiana Proskouriakoff, or Linda Schele. In these three volumes recounting the lives and continuing influence of these seminal figures in Maya studies, the authors and the reader are confronted by the difficulty of separating myth, image, and academic history from biography. The authors are more or less successful in their endeavors as a result of their source materials and their obvious affinities for their subjects.

In "Alfred Maudslay: A Biography," we have a book that, based simply on its subject matter, should be a page-turner. Alfred Maudslay was the archtypical Mesoamerican archaeologist. Part of a generation of great explorers in the Maya area, a group that also included Désiré Charnay and Teobert Maler, he is what the layperson thinks of when imagining the rugged adventurer, slogging through the jungle, beset by bugs, and uncovering lost cities. This is the image that many archaeologists, admittedly or not, still hold of themselves. So in reading a biography of Alfred Maudslay, one longs for the kind of Indiana Jones excitement that his magnificent photographs and travel writings inspire. Even the reprints provided in this book are stunning statements of Maudslay's genius and efforts, and they make the reader long to be part of those early days of exploration. Ian Graham's own enthusiasm for the subject is clear from his introduction onward.

Unfortunately for Graham (perhaps the only living archaeologist who can rival Maudslay as an explorer), Maudslay did not leave behind the kind of personal materials that would give more insight into his character and make for a page-turning biography. As Graham notes, this dearth of personal writings presented for him the picture of a man who was "energetic, handsome, rich, and much traveled, and unmarried until the age of forty-two," with a "blameless record" (274). This picture is somewhat modified with a revelation at the end of the book, but Graham is still confronted by a lack of information to follow up on his discovery.

Nonetheless, Graham provides us with a well-written, insightful, and informative book. This work gives us deep insight into the world in which Maudslay lived, and his place in it. It is an important document for understanding Maudslay's contribution to the field. But Alfred Maudslay is not thrilling, and without a window into his personal life and his driving force, the reader cannot feel drawn into the narrative. We understand why Maudslay, coming from British industrial wealth, might become a colonial official, as he did early in his career. We have less insight into what drove him to the discomforts and hardships of a life searching out ruined cities and documenting monuments.

Again, this is no fault of Graham, who does an excellent job of putting together the limited information available from papers in the possession of Maudslay's niece, as well as those in various library collections. Perhaps we should chalk it up, instead, to Victorian stoicism, for his publications, journal entries, and letters appear rather stiff and...