Reviews The Archaeologist Was a Spy: Sylvanus G. Morley and the Office of Naval Intelligence By Charles H. Harris III & Louis R. Sadler (University of New Mexico Press, 2003; 450 pgs., $32 cloth; www.unmpress.com) As the United States entered World War I in 1917, the Office of Naval Intelligence was obsessed with the notion that the Germans had established, or would establish, U-boat bases in Mexico and Central America and use them to attack ships bound to and from the Panama Canal. To find out, they turned to a young Maya archaeologist, Sylvanus G. Morley of the Carnegie Institution. Using his scholarly credentials as cover, Morley quickly recruited a network of archaeologists and other Americans to spy on the Germans and collect intelligence on the region. In an era of multi-billion-dollar spy budgets with vast bureaucracies, it is hard to imagine the United States, even after three years of world war, with almost no professional intelligence capacity. Morley was given a naval commission and 16 days of training before leaving for Guatemala on a banana boat. Nonetheless, he proved to be resourceful and a superb spy. The network he developed kept watch for German naval activity, tracked down every rumor, and kept an eye on the Germans in the region. Archaeology was the perfect cover as Morley traveled from Copán in Honduras to Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán vainly looking for enemy activity. His reports provided Washington with accurate information on the political situation in Central America, but little German activity. His effectiveness stemmed from his gift for dealing with people of all kinds, from peons to presidents. Historians Harris and Sadler draw on rich source materials including Morley’s reports to Naval Intelligence to portray a vivid picture of Morley and his friends as they mixed archaeology and espionage. This volume combines superior scholarship with a gripping story. Morley went on to become the leading Maya archaeologist of his time, and his classic tome, The Ancient Maya, is still in print. The Archaeologist Was a Spy is a real-life thriller set in a fascinating locale and time.
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Lost World: Rewriting Prehistory—How New Science is Tracing America’s Ice Age Mariners By Tom Koppel (Atria Books, 2003; 300 pgs., illus., $26 cloth; www.SimonSays.com)
Canadian journalist Tom Koppel tells the story of the archaeologists and other scientists who are using new technologies to search for the first Americans along the North Pacific rim from Japan to Alaska to California. He has spent 10 years reporting from remote offshore islands (see “Did They Come By Sea?” American Archaeology, Spring 2000), under the sea, and deep in caves on this new breed of explorers. They are all looking for solid evidence that the first Americans did not come by land across the Bering Strait as had been presumed for the past several decades, but rather they came by boat some 15,000 or more years ago. The “lost world” is that ancient shoreline that is now hidden under more than 250 feet of water as the glaciers melt and the sea level rises. The coastal explorers have now determined that there were plenty of ice-free refuges along the coast as late as 15,000 years ago, and they are trying various innovative ways of excavating under water to find evidence of humans. Modern submersibles and side-scanning sonar are mapping the sea floor along the ancient coastline in search of likely habitation areas, but the evidence is subtle and harder to find than a needle in a haystack. An underwater excavation off British Columbia has recovered artifacts dating to 6,800 years ago, including a finely made harpoon head of antler. On land, archaeologists are testing coastal sites and offshore islands from Alaska to Chile, where the now famous Monte Verde site was dated to 14,500 years ago. Off Alaska, archaeologists are crawling into caves in search of the oldest human remains. Lost World is a spirited narrative that captures the adventure of doing research in such remote and exotic lands. It’s an ongoing adventure where progress is slow and hard earned. Stay tuned. fall • 2003
