Pioneering archaeologists have often made mistakes as great as their contributions. Yucatán through Her Eyes offers the case in point of Alice Dixon Le Plongeon (b. 1851), who worked side by side with her more famous husband Augustus as they carried out archaeological and photographic explorations of places such as Chichén Itzá and Uxmal. The book sandwiches her diary of adventures in Yucatán (1873–76) between more conventional biographies of her earlier and later years. Alice was the youngest daughter of a London photographer. Desperate for a life of adventure and authorship, she realized her dreams by marrying an eccentric gold miner turned archaeologist 20 years her senior. But it was a meeting of hearts as well as minds, and the Le Plongeons shared an affectionate marriage as they endured hardships unimaginable to most scholars today. In 1884 they relocated to New York City, where they spent the next two decades...

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National Period
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