ThePARIJournal A quarterly publication of the Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute Volume XI, No. 4, Spring 2011 In This Issue: In Memoriam:Merle Greene Robertson In Memoriam: Merle Greene Robertson MARC ZENDER Peabody Museum, Harvard University by Marc Zender JOEL SKIDMORE and Precolumbia Mesoweb Press Joel Skidmore PAGES 1-3 • Recent Investigations in the Salto de Agua Region: Sites, Territories, and Frontiers to the West of Palenque by Joshua A. Balcells González Jorge E. Gama Castro and Esteban Mirón Marván PAGES 4-11 • The San Bartolo Regional Archaeological Project: Results of the First Field Season by William A. Saturno PAGES 12-15 • Morley’s Diary: April 27 PAGE 16 Joel Skidmore Editor [email protected] Marc Zender Associate Editor [email protected] The PARI Journal 202 Edgewood Avenue San Francisco, CA 94117 415-664-8889 The renowned Mayanist Merle Greene on August 30, 1913, a small town she once [email protected] Robertson passed away in San Francisco memorably described as “a little cattle Electronic version on Friday, April 22, 2011. Artist, art crossing in the road” (Barnhart 2003:1). available at: historian, photographer, and Mayanist, She moved to Great Falls when she was www.mesoweb.com/ Merle was widely known for her extensive eight, a place which held her “fondest pari/journal/110 4 contributions to the investigation and memories of childhood ... the Missouri The PARI Journal is preservation of the art, iconography, and River, Giant Springs, the sand hills, high published by Precolumbia writing of Maya civilization. mountains, mountain goats, and those Mesoweb Press Merle was born in Miles City, Montana, great blue Montana skies, those wide- ISSN 1531-5398 The PARI Journal 11(4), 2011, pp. 1-3. 1 Zender and Skidmore studies. Given the twin loves of her childhood, it is perhaps hardly to be wondered at that Merle took a degree in art. “Later,” as Peter Mathews (2006:13) recounts, “she went to the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Here for three summers she studied watercolors, oils, photography, and mural painting from Mexico’s top mural instructor, earning her MFA from the University of Guanajuato.” Merle’s artistic background and practical experiences living and working in Mexico were critical preparation for her life’s work as a Mayanist, which began in the summer of 1961 when she joined the University of Pennsylvania Museum project at Tikal, Guatemala. [Merle] spent three summers making architectural drawings of the Central Acropolis, and also started recording monuments by means of rubbings. This technique had been used before in the Maya area, principally by John H. Denison Jr. at Chichen Itza and sites in the central part of the Yucatan peninsula. However, Merle Greene brought the technique to an art form, and also showed how useful the rubbings could be as a means of documentation of Maya relief sculpture. (Mathews 2006:13) Merle would eventually make “about four thousand” rubbings (Barnhart 2003:4) during the course of a distinguished career spanning some five decades (Doyle 2000). These are now all critically important documents, many of them preserving details of the carved surfaces of monuments which have since deteriorated through erosion or been destroyed by the increasingly damaging depredations of looters. Today, more than 2,000 of Merle’s rubbings are housed in the Merle Greene Robertson Collection of the Rare Book and Manuscript Department of Tulane University’s open spaces” (Robertson 2006:25). Merle’s descriptions Latin American Library in New Orleans (Hernández of her childhood environment in interviews and her and Dressing 2011). Since 1993, Merle’s entire collection autobiography Never in Fear (2006) are invariably of rubbings has been available to scholars and amateurs painterly, mingling broad strokes of color with intimate on CD, and they can also be viewed online at Mesoweb descriptions of the natural surroundings, and she (www.mesoweb.com/rubbings). Merle’s work in regularly associated these with her own development preserving Guatemala’s Maya cultural heritage through as an artist. As Peter Mathews (2006:13) wrote in his these rubbings was acknowledged by the Museo Popol foreword to Merle’s autobiography: Vuh in 2004, when Merle was awarded the Orden del Two aspects of [Merle’s] youth in Montana were to have Pop (Museo Popol Vuh 2004). a large influence over the direction of her life. One was As Peter Mathews (2006:15) has noted: an interest in Native American culture. Merle’s family [O]ne could be forgiven for thinking that part-time spent their vacations beside a mountain lake at the edge exploring and “rubbing” would be quite enough to fill of Glacier National Park. Merle frequently went with her a life, but we’re only just beginning to recount Merle’s father to visit his friends, Blackfoot Indian chiefs, and accomplishments. Her first love of the jungle was at Tikal, it was here that she learned Indian sign language. The and in Mexico it has always been Palenque. During the other influence was the great artist Charles M. Russell, 1970s she worked tirelessly, documenting the sculpture who lived in Great Falls. The young Merle spent many of Palenque. ... The result of Merle’s Palenque work an afternoon on his front porch observing and learning is brilliantly documented in the sumptuous series The about painting. Sculpture of Palenque, published by Princeton University In her second year of high school, Merle’s family Press [Robertson 1983-1991]. In this study, ... Merle has relocated to Seattle, where she later began university shown in great detail ... exactly how the beautiful stucco 2 In Memoriam: Merle Greene Robertson sculptures were built up, layer by layer, by the Palenque artists. She has investigated the paints that were used to color the sculptures, searching out pigment sources in the Palenque region and painstakingly experimenting to reproduce the exact colors used by the Palenque artists. In the process, she was able to document the entire method of making beautiful stucco sculptures for which Palenque is so famous. Merle’s rubbings, photographs, paintings, and drawings of Palenque’s architecture and sculpture represent a lasting resource. In 1993, the Mexican government acknowledged Merle’s remarkable contributions to the study of Palenque with the decoration of the Order of the Aztec Eagle (Mathews 2006:17). Of equally lasting importance to the study of Palenque specifically, but also to Maya studies in general, have been Merle’s series of Palenque Round Table conferences. Begun in December, 1973, and convening for eight meetings, the last held in June, 1993, the Mesas Redondas de Palenque produced ten volumes of conference proceedings edited by Merle and others, each documenting numerous breakthroughs in Maya studies. These critical meetings have since been continued by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico, with Merle in the capacity of Honorary President (Mathews 2006:16). In 1982, Merle founded the Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, a non-profit organization which has conducted important research in Mesoamerican art, iconography, and epigraphy. PARI has published numerous scholarly monographs and the quarterly PARI Journal and has sponsored the archaeological investigations of the Cross Group Project at Palenque. Gidwitz, Tom Merle’s contributions to the study of the Maya 2002 Doyenne of Mayanists: Merle Greene Robertson Has Spent will never be forgotten, so important is her legacy a Lifetime Chronicling Mesoamerican Art. Archaeology of documentation of primary materials in the form 55(3):42-49. Available online: www.archaeology.org/0205/ of drawings, paintings, photographs, and rubbings. abstracts/merlegreene.html. But she will be sorely missed by her family, friends, Hernández, Christine, and David Dressing colleagues, students, and legions of admirers. K’a’ayi 2011 Merle Greene Robertson Collection, 1920s-2010. Latin usik sakik’aal. American Library Manuscripts Collection 133: http://lal. tulane.edu/collections/manuscripts/robertson_merle. References Mathews, Peter 2006 Foreword to Never in Fear, by Merle Greene Robertson, pp. Barnhart, Ed 13-18. San Francisco: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute. 2003 Periodic Interview Series: Merle Greene Robertson. Transcript of an interview with Merle Greene Robertson, Museo Popol Vuh December 2003. Maya Exploration Center: www. 2004 Dra. Merle Greene Robertson: Orden del Pop 2004. Museo mayaexploration.org/pdf/interview_q2_merle.pdf. Popol Vuh: www.popolvuh.ufm.edu/eng/popMerle2004. htm. Doyle, John Robertson, Merle Greene 2000 Digging Deep: Archaeologist Merle Greene Robertson 1974-1996 Palenque Round Table (Mesa Redonda de Palenque). 8 Has Spent Four Decades Uncovering Treasures of Mayan volumes. Various presses. Civilization. San Francisco Chronicle, September 4, 2000, 1983-1991 The Sculpture of Palenque. 4 volumes. Princeton A-5. Available online: http://articles.sfgate.com/2000-09- University Press. 04/news/17659641_1_mayan-ruins-mayan-civilization- 2006 Never in Fear. San Francisco: Pre-Columbian Art Research archaeological. Institute. 3 Recent Investigations in the Salto de Agua Region: Sites,Territories,and Frontiers to the West of Palenque1 JOSHUA A. BALCELLS GONZÁLEZ JORGE E. GAMA CASTRO ESTEBAN MIRÓN MARVÁN Fifteen years of regional investigations have led to the prepared for transit between sites or toward the river conclusion that the ancient kingdom of Palenque should valley of the Tulija. In this context, it has been important not be viewed as an isolated