inscriptions, taken from his 1915 publication. This illustrates the text appearing on a
lintel in the
Chichen Itza building commonly known as the "Temple of the Initial Series", as it is the only inscription for the site known to show a
Maya Long Count Calendar date. The date shown here (starting row 2, ending at A5) is 10.2.9.1.9 9 Muluk 7 Sak (equivalent to July 30, 878 CE). In his day, Morley was widely regarded as one of the leading figures in Maya scholarship, in authority perhaps second only to Eric Thompson, whose views he mostly shared. From the late 1920s through to perhaps the mid-1970s, the reconstruction of ancient Maya society and history pieced together by Morley, Thompson and others constituted the "standard" interpretation against which competing views had to be measured. However, major advances made in the
decipherment of
Maya hieroglyphic writing and refinements in archaeological data which have been made since that time have now called into question much of this former "standard" interpretation, overturning key elements and significantly revising the Maya historical account. As far as Morley's own research is concerned, its reputation for soundness and quality has been downgraded somewhat in the light of recent reappraisals; yet he is still regarded as an important contributor to the field.
Influences on other scholars Many Mayan scholars and archaeologists had their first research opportunity and employment under Morley's tutelage working on the various Carnegie projects. Of these, perhaps the two most notable were
J. Eric S. Thompson and
Tatiana Proskouriakoff. Thompson shortly became the field's most dominant figure and its uncontested expert. Together with Morley, he was most responsible for promulgating the view of the ancient Maya as peaceable astronomers, obsessed with
time and
calendric observations. This view became the prevailing one for the next several decades. Proskouriakoff also went on to establish a stellar career and a lifelong association with the Carnegie Institution; however, her researches ultimately provided the primary convincing evidence which later disproved much of what had been maintained by Thompson and Morley. In 1925, a young
English Cambridge anthropology student named
John Eric Sidney Thompson wrote to Morley seeking employment with the Carnegie programme on digs in Central America. Thompson had studied Morley's 1915 work and from that taught himself
Maya calendrics, which were a particular passion for Morley. The Carnegie Institution at Morley's urging accordingly hired Thompson, and he soon found himself at work in Chichen Itza, involved with its architectural reconstruction (for which task Thompson had no particular qualifications). During the 1925–26 season, Thompson became well-acquainted with Morley, the two of them along with their wives (the newly married Thompson was in fact on his
honeymoon) making several side-trips together. However, at the end of the 1926 season, Thompson left Carnegie's employ to take up a post offered by Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. This post offered Thompson far greater freedom and diversity for his research. Thompson and Morley were to remain close and like-minded colleagues in spite of this move. Towards the end of the Chichen Itza project, Morley came across the drawings of a young artist and draftsperson,
Tatiana Proskouriakoff, who as an unpaid excavator had accompanied a 1936–37
University of Pennsylvania Museum expedition to the Maya site of
Piedras Negras. The quality of her reconstructive panorama drawings (depicting what the site "might have looked like" when in use) so impressed Morley that he determined to enroll her onto the Carnegie staff. However, this was in the midst of the
Great Depression and funds for hiring were scarce; it was also not clear whether Morley had the appropriate authority to do so. After several entreaties, Morley again came up with an innovative funding scheme whereby he devised two campaigns to raise money by subscription to send Proskouriakoff to
Copán and the
Yucatán. These were successful, and in 1939, Proskouriakoff transferred onto the Carnegie payroll and was duly dispatched to Copán to gather data for reconstructive drawings of that site. It is now generally accepted that at no time was the Maya region united under a single
polity, but rather that individual "city-states" maintained a somewhat independent existence, albeit one with its fluctuating conquests and local subservience to more dominant centers. In support of his view, Morley devised a 4-tier classification system of relative importance, which he ascribed to all of the then-known main Maya sites (about 116); many more sites are now known, and his classification system is now seen as an arbitrary one, contradicted in places by the sites' texts which can now be (substantially) read. Other ideas Morley put forward include the proposal that the ancient Maya were the first in
Mesoamerica to
domesticate maize (
Zea mays ssp.
mays), with the wild variety known as
teosinte being its
progenitor. Recent
genetic studies have shown Morley to be largely correct in this, although the beginnings of its domestication (
12,000 to
7,500 years ago) pre-dates the establishment of anything resembling Maya society. In general, Morley held that the ancient Maya had been the pre-eminent
civilization of Mesoamerica, from which other cultures had drawn their influences. It is now accepted that other societies (such as the
Zapotec and
Olmec) preceded that of the Maya and the influences—such as development of
writing and the
Mesoamerican calendars—were rather the other way around; even in the later stages of Maya history, their region came under significant influences drawn from central Mexico, such as the
Toltec "invasion". However, the Maya did also exert a widespread influence over neighboring contemporary cultures, one which was significant and not to be overlooked.
Maya writing In common with most other Maya scholars, Morley was particularly interested in the mysterious nature of the
Maya script. The essentials of the calendric notation and astronomical data had been worked out by the early 20th century, and by the 1930s
John E. Teeple had solved (with Morley's encouragement) the glyphs known as the "Supplementary Series", proving that these referred to the
lunar cycle and could be used to predict
lunar eclipses. However, the bulk of the texts and inscriptions still defied all attempts at decipherment, despite much concerted effort. It was Morley's view, and one that found wide support, that these undeciphered portions would contain only more of the same astronomical, calendric and perhaps religious information, not actual historical data. He wrote in 1940, "time, in its various manifestations, the accurate record of its principal phenomena, constitutes the majority of Maya writing." He also wrote that he doubted that any
toponym would be found in the texts. He supposed that the Maya writing system was one based chiefly upon
ideographic or
pictographic principles, and that if present any elements of
phoneticism would always be "overshadow[ed]" by the ideographic meaning assigned to each glyph." That is to say, in Morley's view each
glyph substantially represented words, ideas and concepts
in toto, and did not separately depict the individual
language sounds as spoken by the scribes who had written them (with the possible exception of an occasional
rebus-like element, as had already been demonstrated for
Aztec writing). The convincing evidence which was to overturn this view became known only after Morley's death, starting with
Yuri Knorozov's work in the 1950s. Over the next decades other Mayanists such as Proskouriakoff,
Michael D. Coe, and
David H. Kelley would further expand upon this phonetic line of enquiry, which ran counter to the accepted view but would prove to be ever more fruitful as their work continued. By the mid-1970s, it had become increasingly clear to most that the Maya
writing system was a
logosyllabic one, a mixture of logograms and phonetic components that included a fully functional
syllabary. These realizations led to the successful
decipherment of many of the texts which had been impenetrable (and almost "dismissed") by Morley and the "old school". In retrospect, these breakthroughs may have been realized earlier had it not been for Morley's, and later Eric Thompson's, almost "on principle" position against the phonetic approach. Consequently, most of Morley's attempts to advance understanding of the Maya script have been superseded. Morley's particular passion was the study of the
Maya calendar and its related inscriptions, and in this respect, he made useful expositions that have withstood later scrutiny. His talent was not so much to make innovations, but rather to publicise and explain the workings of the various systems. He was particularly proficient at recovering calendar dates from well-worn and weathered inscriptions, owing to his great familiarity with the various glyphic styles of the ''
tzolk'in, haab''' and
Long Count elements. Yet in his focus on calendric details, he would often overlook or even neglect the documentation of other non-calendric aspects of the Maya script; the comprehensiveness of some of his publications suffered much as a result. Some leading figures from a later generation of Mayanists would come to regard his publications as being inferior in detail and scope to that of his predecessors, such as
Teoberto Maler and
Alfred Maudslay — poorer quality reproductions, omitted texts, sometimes inaccurate drawings.
Archaeology As a director of archaeological excavation projects, Sylvanus Morley was well regarded and liked by his colleagues and his Carnegie board employers, his later movement to "lighter duties" notwithstanding. The reconstructions of Chichen Itza and other sites were widely admired; but in terms of the research output and the resulting documentation produced, the legacy of these projects did not quite amount to what might have been expected to come from such a lengthy investigation. For some later Maya researchers, "...in spite of seventeen years of research at Chichén Itzá by Carnegie, this world-famous city yet remains an archaeological enigma"; it is comparatively little-understood given the amount of work which had gone into it under Morley's direction. Coe also comments that many talented people such as Thompson would spend more time in restoring the site for later tourism than in actual research. Thompson himself would later remark in reference to his time working for Carnegie: "...in my memory it seems that I personally shifted every blessed stone."
Summation Despite the later reassessments that were to somewhat dull the shine of his achievements, Sylvanus Morley remains a notable and respected figure in Maya scholarship. His publications are now generally superseded, except for his calendrical compilations. His
epigraphic work, which was his personal abiding interest ("bringing home the epigraphic bacon" was a favorite quote of his), is likewise generally outdated, although it was widely supported for several decades after his death. Perhaps the contributions that today remain the most relevant arise from his instigation of the Carnegie research programmes, his enthusiasm and support shown to other scholars, and the undeniable successes in the restorative efforts that have made the Maya sites justly famous. He had particular talents in communicating his fascination for the subject to a wider audience, and in his lifetime became quite widely known as perhaps
the quintessential model of an early 20th-century Central American scholar and explorer, complete with his ever-present
pith helmet. Some have even speculated that his life and exploits may have provided some of the inspiration for the character of
Indiana Jones in the
Spielberg films; the Carnegie Institute itself mentions that it might also have been Morley's field director at Chichen Itza, Earl Morris. Sylvanus Morley was also to be remembered as a spokesman and representative of the
Maya peoples, among whom he spent so much of his time, and who otherwise lacked the means to directly address some of their concerns with the wider public. ==Major works==