Maya Archaeologist

Maya Archaeologist is a volume of reminiscences by one of the foremost of twentieth-century archaeologists in the Maya area. Thompson evokes the world of a generation ago, describing the difficult conditions under which digs were accomplished and contrasting them with the more developed facilities, especially in travel, of today. The book is arranged by chapters dealing with individual sites or zones. It recounts personal experience (travel on jungle trails, procurement of native labor, discovery of monuments) in an urbane, often humorous, style. There are interesting glimpses of S. G. Morley and other well-known figures of the 1920’s and 1930’s, as well as of native Maya personalities. It is a light-hearted, conversational book, but nowhere else could one find so much in print on the personal side of the heyday of Maya archaeology.