LEGENDS
OF
ARCHAEOLOGY
A Pioneer in Maya Archaeology Making her way in a field dominated by men, Tatiana Proskouriakoff revolutionized the study of Maya hieroglyphics. By Char Solomon
R
MIKE BEETEM
arely is a scholar able to change the direction of research in his or her chosen field, yet this is precisely what Tatiana Proskouriakoff did during her 50-year career in Mesoamerican archaeology. While she was first known for her artistic reconstruction renderings of Maya architecture, it was her work with Maya hieroglyphic texts that earned her the highest awards in the field. Proskouriakoff pursued her research on the Maya with thoroughness and integrity, following the evidence wherever it led, even when it ran contrary to accepted beliefs of the leading scholars of her time. That she, a single woman, rose to the pinnacle of Maya studies at a time when the field was still dominated by Ivy League–educated men of means, was something she characteristically downplayed in her life. In 1972, fresh out of college, I began working for Proskouriakoff as a volunteer in her office at Harvard’s Peabody Museum. She was in her 60s, petite, with brown, tightly curled hair, and customarily attired in skirt, blouse, and stockings. When we talked, she looked unwaveringly at me from behind large reading glasses, and, though she treated me kindly, I at first felt intimidated. As we worked at her desk with the intricate jades dredged from the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá in Mexico, she soon set This photo, believed to be taken in the 1940s, shows Proskouriakoff at El Tajin in Veracruz, Mexico.
american archaeology
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