WOMEN IN ARCHEOLOGY: LINDA SCHELE—MAYA SCHOLAR, ARTIST, AUTHOR—GONE TOO SOON

 

Linda Schele at Palenque (Photo Justin Kerr)

It's hard for me to write about Linda Schele. Not just because she was so central to the study and understanding of the Maya culture, their writings, civilization and how the world came to view them, but because she was my gateway into understanding the Maya. Just several short months after I'd 'discovered' her by reading her works in my bookstore smack dab in the middle of Maya country, she died at 55 from pancreatic cancer in 1998 in Austin. Since it was pre-internet days and we were in rural Mexico I didn't learn of her death until five months later—a customer broke the news. I was devastated. Even though I only knew Linda Schele through the printed page, I felt I'd lost a friend.

A FOREST OF KINGS

Schele became my Maya mentor for a number of reasons. By way of introduction, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya, co-authored with David Freidel, held me rapt for days. Not only was she an author, she was a woman studying and doing, taking chances in archeology, predominantly a man's world at the time (and who's to say, probably still is). She was vibrant and exciting and wrote beautiful volumes about this mysterious civilization which bordered on the mystic but were firmly rooted in science. First and foremost an artist, she wove a story about the ancient Maya, who at the time were lauded yet elusive. Her work and writings were approachable. She made remarkable progress in a short period of time. She learned the names of Maya rulers, a true breakthrough. Along with fellow scholars Floyd Lounsbury and Peter Mathews, they were first to decode a Maya king's name, Pacal, in 1973, at Palenque's Mesa Rodunda. It was the first meeting of Maya archeologists, scholars and admirers, also known as the Maya Roundtable. Pacal, by the way, was Palenque's greatest and longest running ruler. Nothing like starting at the top, Ms. Schele.

THE CALL

How did Linda fall under the spell of the Maya? A graduate from the University of Cincinnati with degrees in education and art, she was teaching studio art at the University of Alabama. In 1970 she traveled with David, her husband, to photograph Mesoamerican sites in the Yucatan for the University's collection. The next year they returned to Mexico in an obligatory visit to Palenque. "When they arrived at Palenque, she was mesmerized," wrote famed Maya photographer, artist and scholar Merle Greene Robertson, who lived and worked on site.

Palenque Temple of Inscriptions (MacDuff Everton)

"The morning they left for Uxmal we said good-bye and hoped to see each other again" said Robertson. "At five p.m., guess who appeared at the door, Linda. They'd been to Uxmal but turned around and returned to Palenque. It was the beginning of a long, dear friendship."

Meeting Robertson, her most important mentor during the early stages of her new voca-tion, drew Schele into the world of the ancient Maya, their art and their system of hieroglyphic writing, at the time not fully understood.

Schele described her trajectory like this: "I was a fair to middling painter who went on a Christmas trip to Mexico and came back an art historian and a Mayanist."

UNVEILING A DYNASTY

Schele went on to become world famous and a leading authority in her new field. She believed her background in art assisted in seeing the Maya writing in an unencumbered, less scientific manner. Soon Linda's speciality was decoding Maya hieroglyphics, especially after the 1973 Mesa Rodunda at Palenque. Prior to that, though greatly studied by epigraphers and iconologists, no one had much luck deciphering them. 

How Glyphs Were Read by Schele and Others

Concerned that Maya research was limited to a few experts with special access to key resources, Robertson's brainstorm for the Palenque gathering drew authorities, students, and local Mayanists together to hash things out. Schele, along with Mathews, an undergraduate who'd spent a year working on famed archeologist Eric Thompson's T-numbers—the only 'de-coding' attempt so far at breaking the Maya glyphs—began piecing together Palenque's history using what was called the Tablet of 96 Glyphs. Researchers understood this to depict a line of royal accession, and within hours, through a combination of luck and Mathew's intimate knowledge of glyphs, they unveiled most of Palenque's dynastic history, including the aforementioned ruler Pacal. This achievement became the stimulus that led to many later discoveries by Schele and other scholars. 

Merle (center), Fellow Scholars and Linda (right)

VERTICAL ASCENT

Schele's accomplishments moved vertically. In 1975-76 she was a fellow in pre-Columbian studies at Dumbarton Oaks, D.C., while also working with fellow scholars to accelerate the process of Maya hieroglyphic decipherment through word order in Maya inscriptions. In 1980 she was awarded a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies and her dissertation, Maya Glyphs: the Verbs, 1982, won The Most Creative and Innovative Project in Professional and Scholarly Publications, by Association of American Publishers.

In 1977 she founded the Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop at Texas. These meetings, held at UT/Austin, have become a major source for many significant epigraphic discoveries made about ancient American civilization over the last two decades.

In 1981 she continued her teaching career in the Department of Art/Art History at the University. In 1988 Schele was named the John D. Murchison Professor of Art at University of Texas.

In 1986 she organized a ground breaking exhibition of Maya art, The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. The catalog, co-authored with Mary Miller, continues to be used as a major text for the field and was awarded The Alfred Barr Award of College Art Association for the Best Exhibition Catalog/1986.

CONTEMPORARY MAYA

Also in the mid-80s she expanded her academic interest to include the culture of the contemporary Maya. Along with two colleagues, she organized and presented 13 workshops on hieroglyphic writing to Maya speaking peoples of Guatemala and Mexico in order to re-introduce hieroglyphic writing and interest of the ancient Maya to the modern Maya. The Maya trained in these workshops are now actively engaged in the translation of the writings of their ancient ancestors and tutoring others to do so. Working with young Maya was her most cherished activity.

For general public interest she actively promoted making scholarly research accessible to the general public which included the annual Maya Meetings at Texas. She made numerous speaking arrangements around the world, took tours of Mesoamerican sites by Far Horizons, and wrote three more books: Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path, co-authored with Freidel and Joy Parker, 1993; Hidden Faces of the Maya, 1997; and The Code of Kings: The Sacred Landscape of Seven Maya Temples and Tombs, co-authored with Peter Mathews.

Code Breakers Peter Mathews and Linda Schele, Palenque 1973 (R. Thornton)

In a 25-year period, Schele produced a number of important works on ancient Maya art, culture and writing. But she was also a hands-on Mayanist who traipsed to and explored numerous pyramid sites from Mexico to Belize and Guatemala, looking at each Maya cityscape for symbols, clues to their astronomy, meanings of rituals deciphered from hieroglyphs, and the legacies the Maya left behind. Schele's unique combination of art, history and teaching gave her a fresh and unique overview of the civilization she came to love, know, and help bring to light. Her influence on how the world views the ancient Maya is unparalleled. RIP Linda Dean Richmond Schele.

Linda Schele and Bust of Pacal

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

MEXICO'S MARVELS—CENOTES OF THE YUCATAN

 

Cenote in Yucatan 

Tangled green vines brush against my face as I trek behind our guide deeper into the low-lying Yucatan jungle. The narrow, gnarly path—recently cut by machete—oozes damp, musty smells.

It is July, rainy season in Mexico, and temperatures are in the nineties, a veritable heat wave. We’re in search of a cenote, a clear fresh water pool, also known as a sinkhole here in the Yucatan, a place the Maya named Sian Ka'an or Where the Sky is Born.

Although the Maya used these ancient wells as their water source in an arid land that offered few rivers, our search is for recreational purposes. We plan to cool off in the cenote’s crystal waters, to swim and maybe snorkel.

Traipsing through thick forest growth alongside a mangrove swamp, little did I realize this jungle spot forty miles south of Cancun and just seven miles north of Playa del Carmen (Tres Rios) would many years later become a major resort. With a wave of the hand, our guide motions us to follow.

Tres Rios cenote (haciendotresrios.com)

We ford the stream behind him and into a clearing. Now surrounded by brilliant green foliage, the scene becomes a primeval forest. The clarity of the cenote is beyond comparison. Gazing into it I see mangrove tree trunks reaching up from the pool’s bottom, breaking the waterline and stretching high into the tropical sky. 

Cenotes are plentiful in this part of Mexico and have become a favorite tourist attraction as vacationers discover they’re an ideal place to cool off in the sultry climate of the Riviera Maya. Nearly five hundred are known to exist in the Northeastern Yucatan where Maya civilization flourished for 3500 years from 2000 BC to 1521 AD. 

Cenote Bang by USGS.gov

To the Maya, a culture made great by ruling dynasties and strong religious beliefs, cenotes were more than just a water source. The Maya believed cenotes were the sacred entrance to the underworld of spirits where Chaac, the rain god, lived. On a parched peninsula, Chaac ruled in a long line of spiritual dieties. Water is life.

Of the Yucatan’s numerous cenotes, perhaps best known is the Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza, a ceremonial center known for towering pyramids and spring and fall equinox displays of shadow and light. The vertical wall cenote has a diameter of 160 feet and measures 60 feet from its lip to the water surface below. Made famous by archeological explorer Edward H. Thompson, this well brought forth its diabolic history when Thompson dredged it in 1904.

Thompson knew Maya life intertwined agriculture, religion and water. Due to agricultural needs to feed a burgeoning  population, the Maya calendar was developed to determine auspicious dates for planting and harvesting. Thompson also knew the calendar was interpreted by the priests, but as their promises failed to bring rain, he’d heard human sacrifices were thrown into the cenote to appease Chaac. He was also positive that along with the maidens, other offerings would also have been made.

The Boston explorer tested his theory by creating a diving aparatus and taking diving lessons, hiring a Greek diver to assist him, traveled to Boston to buy a derrick and thirty-foot boom, designed his own diving apparatus, and shipped it all to the Yucatan.

Edward H. Thompson (photo americanegypt.com)

On his return, he dove and dredged the Sacred Cenote daily. Finally, about six weeks in, he came up with gold and copper discs, figures of Maya gods and the clincher, human skeletons. His exploration of the cenote proved that human sacrifice was indeed a part of Maya life, with human sacrifice hopefully giving them access to the rain god and his whims.

Chicen Itza's cenote is but one of many in the Yucatan. Part 2 will explore how cenotes were formed and give details on some of the more popular ones on the Peninsula. Stay tuned.

For more information on the Maya, Mexico and the Yucatan, check out my website, www.jeaninekitchel.com. My travel memoir, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, is available on Amazon.com. Also on Amazon, are books one and two in my Mexico cartel thriller trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown. Subscribe to my blog above for my writings on Mexico and the Maya.