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

Rarely 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

Proskouriakoff was a highly skilled artist. This is her rendition of how the Acropolis at Copån, Honduras, once appeared. The renowned hieroglyphic stairway is seen at the main pyramid in the center of the drawing.

me at ease with her gentle humor. I began asking her questions about her background and was entranced by the stories she shared of her early childhood in Russia and her years working in Mexico and Central America.

Proskouriakoff’s eyes sparkled as she described her first visit to the ruins of Copán, Honduras. Sylvanus G. Morley of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW) had sent her in 1939 to make reconstruction drawings of the ruins. While she had already been on two previous expeditions to the Maya region, this was her first time traveling there alone. She was to join the project that was already in progress under the direction of the colorful and complex Norwegian Gustav Stromsvik.

After a rough week at sea, she disembarked at Puerto Barrios on Guatemala’s Caribbean coast, where she caught the train inland. From there she hired a driver to take her over rugged mountain passes to Copán. The roads they traversed were narrow, rutted, and muddy with blind hairpin turns and sheer cliffs, but the vistas were breathtaking. When they finally arrived at the place a CIW guide was to meet them, the driver announced he had to leave at once in order to reach his village before nightfall. Her guide was not yet there, and fearing she would be stranded in that desolate place, she convinced the driver to stay a while longer to share her boxed lunch. While they ate, a figure slowly approached, winding down a distant mountain path. Stromsvik had sent a young boy and mule to carry her the rest of the way to headquarters. Once there, the archaeologists cordially invited her to join them for cocktails and a game of poker, but concerned about the impression this might make, she declined and went to unpack, anticipating the next day and her first view of the ruins.

During the ensuing months at Copán, she was the only female staff member. While the men shared a comfortable camaraderie, she learned to deal with intense loneliness. She had “real grit,” the British Mayanist and explorer Ian Graham recalled. She had to delicately confront Stromsvik, who was her senior in age and experience, in the field on several matters. He went on frequent drinking binges that led to late night serenades at her window and drunken proposals of marriage.

The late Edwin Shook, a close friend of both, believed that Stromsvik fell deeply in love with her during this time but was never able to express it to her when sober. Though neither ever married, they formed a lifelong friendship based on their mutual respect for hard work, good humor, and the love of a well-told story. Proskouriakoff faced these and other difficult situations as a woman in a male-dominated profession without com-

This photograph of members of the Carnegie Institution of Washington was taken at Mayapån in Mexico. Due to her skill and determination, Proskouriakoff gained entry into a field dominated by men.

Proskouriakoff catalogues jade in her office at Harvard’s Peabody Museum in this photo taken in 1974.

promising her own standards, and in so doing, she helped to open the doors for women in the decades to come.

The route that led to her passion for the Maya was a circuitous one. Born in Tomsk, Siberia, in 1909 to highly educated parents, she had a rich early childhood. Reading by the age of three, she received instruction in French, music, and most importantly, art. However, the onset of World War I brought an abrupt end to this happy period in her life. Her father, a chemist, was unable to enlist in the Imperial Army due to a heart condition, but in 1915 he was commissioned by Czar Nicholas II to oversee Russian munitions production in the United States. The family attempted to depart by ship from the nearly icebound northern port of Arkhangel’sk, but the captain, learning that Proskouriakoff and her sister were sick with scarlet fever, ordered soldiers to carry them back to the shore. Their mother, a physician, remained behind to nurse them back to health. The family was reunited months later in New York; but within a year, the czar abdicated his throne, and Russia was torn apart by revolution.

Their ties to the former government preventing their return, the Proskouriakoffs chose to make a new home in the Philadelphia area. Here, Proskouriakoff excelled in school. Under the tutelage of her talented aunt, who had studied architecture before fleeing Russia, Proskouriakoff improved her skills in drawing and watercolor in a studio on the third floor of the spacious family home. In 1926, she attended Pennsylvania State College, where the School of Engineering offered courses in design that interested her. It was an unusual direction for a young woman at the time, but she was surrounded by strong women in her family who were pursuing careers in medicine, chemistry, and art. Proskouriakoff made this choice without regard to the gender expectations of the time. It was a pattern she would continue throughout her life.

Receiving a degree in architecture in 1930, she discovered that the depressed economy had drastically slowed new construction projects. Work was scarce. She eventually found a design job at a needlepoint studio, making intricate patterns for wealthy clients unaffected by the depression. One client commissioned an Egyptian design, which led her to research material at the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. She soon began doing volunteer drafting work for the Classics Department there.

As word of the excellence of her work spread, she was asked to produce drawings of Maya artifacts for Linton Satterthwaite, head of a major project at Piedras Negras deep in the Petén rain forest in northern Guatemala. In 1936, Satterthwaite invited her to join his project to complete a survey and map of the site. It took about two weeks of traveling by train, boat, and pack mule to get to the remote site, and en route, she visited the breathtaking ruins of Palenque. There Proskouriakoff saw firsthand the elegance of Maya architecture and knew that she had found her life’s work.

While surveying at Piedras Negras, Proskouriakoff also began making sketches of the structures, drawing what she felt, with Satterthwaite’s input, the site would have looked like more than 1,000 years earlier. On one structure, she told him she believed a stairway would have existed where he said there was none, so he challenged her to dig and find the evidence. When she uncovered the

remains of the staircase, she was delighted that she had proven her point.

Back at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Proskouriakoff completed a watercolor of the acropolis at Piedras Negras, and Satterthwaite knew it was something quite special. He decided to bring it to the attention of Morley, who, certain that such renderings would stir broader public interest in the Maya, decided she should make further expeditions to the region to make similar drawings. So began her affiliation with the CIW’s Division of Historical Research, which, under the direction of the noted archaeologist Alfred V. Kidder, helped to shape her long career. In 1946, the CIW published her Album of Maya Architecture, which firmly established her reputation in Mesoamerican archaeology. The result of 11 years of work throughout Mexico and Central America, it contains meticulous reconstruction renderings of the pyramids, temples, grand plazas, and ballcourts for which the Maya are famous.

She next turned her attention to Maya art, specifically the carvings of rulers and warriors on the monumental stone sculptures, called stelae, found at many of the archaeological sites in Mesoamerica. The result of a friendly argument with Morley over the dating of a particular stela, her book A Study of Maya Sculpture (1950) solidified her reputation for rigorous research and analysis. But despite earning the respect of her colleagues in the field, she continued to labor in relative obscurity. This would change, however, in 1960 after the publication of her seminal article on Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions, in which Proskouriakoff put forth her belief that the glyphs dealt with actual events in the lives of specific rulers. The article, titled “Historical Implications of a Pattern of Dates at Piedras Negras, Guatemala,” refuted the prevalent view among prominent scholars who believed that these inscriptions were astronomical or religious texts concerned primarily with the passage of time. She made such a convincing case that no significant academic debate arose in response. This and her subsequent articles pointed Maya hieroglyphic research in a new direction.

Decipherment of Maya texts quickly escalated. Today, according to David Stuart, a leading authority on Maya hieroglyphs, nearly 80 percent are readable, and thus the modern Maya, along with the growing legions of Maya enthusiasts around the world, can learn the history of this ancient civilization. As a result of her work, the American

This watercolor by Proskouriakoff depicts Piedras Negras in Guatemala. Her ashes were buried in the highest temple in the background of the picture in 1998, 13 years after her death. The delay was due to the threat guerrillas posed at that time to visitors to the site.

Anthropological Association gave Proskouriakoff the Alfred Vincent Kidder Award for Eminence in the Field of Mesoamerican Archaeology in 1962. She is the only woman so honored.

In the 1970s, public interest in these new discoveries about the Maya intensified, and magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times began to run front-page articles on the subject. Journalists and documentary filmmakers requested interviews with Proskouriakoff, but she mostly referred them to her more gregarious colleague, Ian Graham. During these years, she maintained a busy schedule of teaching and advising students at Harvard, many of whom have gone on to successful careers in Maya studies. She also completed her book, Jades from the Cenote of Sacrifice: Chichén Itzá, and was instrumental in seeing that much of this collection was returned to Mexico.

During the last years of her life, Proskouriakoff suffered Alzheimer’s cisease. She died in 1985.

Early in her career she questioned if a woman in her field could ever “get a square deal.” She later answered this question by winning the highest awards and accolades given in her profession.

She was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society, granted an honorary doctorate by Tulane University, and received Guatemala’s highest honor, the Order of the Quetzal.

What may well have mattered the most to her, however, was the reception she received on her final trip through Central America in 1978, where she reconnected with friends and colleagues she had not seen in many years. After a speech she delivered in Spanish to a packed auditorium at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán in Mérida, Mexico, Proskouriakoff was thronged by admirers and lionized by the press. It was a fitting end to a brilliant career, one that was unwaveringly devoted to the study and understanding of ancient Maya civilization.

CHAR SOLOMON is the author of Tatiana Proskouriakoff: Interpreting the Ancient Maya, published by the University of Oklahoma Press.