author
Alfred Percival Maudslay
1850–1931
A traveler, archaeologist, and gifted recorder of the ancient Maya, he helped turn ruined cities into places the wider world could truly see. His photographs, maps, and casts set a new standard for careful fieldwork in Central America.
2 Audiobooks
A note on the position and extent of the great temple enclosure of Tenochtitlan, and the position, structure and orientation of the Teocolli of Huitzilopochtli.
by Alfred Percival Maudslay
A Glimpse at Guatemala And Some Notes on the Ancient Monuments of Central America
by Anne Cary Maudslay, Alfred Percival Maudslay
About the author
Born in England in 1850, Alfred Percival Maudslay studied at Cambridge and began his career in the British colonial service, working in places including Fiji, Tonga, and Australia. He later left official life behind and devoted himself to exploration and archaeological work.
Maudslay became one of the pioneering early researchers of Maya civilization. During expeditions in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, he carefully photographed sites, mapped ruins, and made plaster casts and paper molds of carvings and inscriptions. This patient, methodical work preserved details that were difficult to study on site and helped later scholars understand Maya history.
He is especially remembered for the archaeology volumes of Biologia Centrali-Americana, published between 1889 and 1902, which brought together the results of his fieldwork in lasting form. Maudslay died in 1931, but his records remain an important bridge between nineteenth-century exploration and modern Maya archaeology.