Download Sylvanus Griswold Morley

Sylvanus Griswold Morley
A Life in Archaeology and Elsewhere
By Jason S. Shapiro
Sylvanus Morley next to Stela F, Quiriguá, Guatemala,
1910. Photograph by Jesse Nusbaum.
Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives
(NMHM/DCA), Neg. No. 060936.
S
ylvanus Griswold Morley (1882–1948)
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.
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and the nature of Mayan society largely have been superseded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, 1910. 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. 139486.
58 E l P a l a c i o
. . . 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
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
60 E l P a l a c i o
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.
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:
OPPOSITE: Edgar Lee Hewett’s staff from El Rito de los Frijoles, in what is now
Bandelier National Monument, ca. 1910. 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. 081919.
BELOW: Sylvanus Morley stands below a ring in a ball court, Chichén Itzá,
ca. 1910. Photograph by Jesse Nusbaum. Courtesy Palace of the Governors
Photo Archives (NMHM/DCA), Neg. No. 059876.
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
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
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
62 E l P a l a c i o
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 53.”15 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 1922.16
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.18
RIGHT: Sylvanus Morley’s sketch of
hieroglyphic steps, east, middle, and west
doorways, Quiriguá, Guatemala, 1910.
Photograph by Jesse Nusbaum. Courtesy
Palace of the Governors Photo Archives
(NMHM/DCA), Neg. No. 061110.
FOLLOWING PAGE: Sylvanus Griswold
Morley in later life. Photographer unknown.
Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo
Archives (NMHM/DCA), Neg. No. 010314.
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
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,
1919. 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 20–10 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
64 E l P a l a c i o
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
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 let-
1. American Anthropologist 51 (1949): 293–97.
2. Ibid., 295.
3. 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., 38.
5. The institution known as Pennsylvania Military College (PMC) began as Widener College,
founded in 1821. Between 1892 and 1972, the institution was called Pennsylvania Military
College. After 1972 it was renamed Widener University. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Widener_University.
6. El Palacio 35 (11, August 15, 1928): 184.
7. 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), 85.
9. Ibid., 87–88.
10. American Anthropologist 51 (1949): 296.
11. Sylvanus G. Morley, “Excavations at Quirgua, Guatemala,” National Geographic Magazine 24
(1913): 339–61. See also Gordon R. Willey and Jeremy A. Sabloff, A History of American
Archaeology, 3rd edition (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1993), 71.
12. 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
ter 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.
of establishing accurate chronologies in order to fully understand the cultural evolution of
prehistoric societies. Snead, Ruins and Rivals, 122.
13. Chris Wilson, The Myth of Santa Fe (Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 1997), 121.
14. Ibid., 123–25. See also Sylvanus Morley, “Santa Fe Architecture,”
Old Santa Fe 2 (3, January 1915).
15. Harris and Sadler, Archaeologist, 46.
16. Ibid., 291.
17. Ibid., 92.
18. Ibid., 289.
19. Ibid., 92–93.
20. 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), 53.
22. Harris and Sadler, Archaeologist, 288–89. The resolution censoring Boas was not
rescinded until 2005.
23. David H. Price, “The Shameful Business: Leslie Spier on the Censure of Franz Boas,”
HAN 27 (2, 2001): 9–12.
24. Ibid., 289.
25. See, e.g., David Price, “Anthropologists as Spies,” The Nation (November 20, 2000).
26. Human Terrain Systems, http://humanterrainsystem.army.mil/.
27. Ibid.; see “Memoriam” section.
28. American Anthropological Association Board Resolution, http://www.aaanet.org/pdf/
EB_Resolution_110807.pdf.
29. Harris and Sadler, Archaeologist, 281.
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