Morley, Sylvanus Griswold, , Pennsylvania 1883 1948 Male Archeologist archaeologist and authority on Maya civilization, was born in Chester, Pa. , the eldest of six children (two of them boys) of Col. Benjamin Franklin Morley, professor of chemistry and mathematics and vice-president of Pennsylvania Military College, and Sarah Eleanor Constance (de Lannoy) Morley, daughter of a professor of languages at the college.
Sylvanus ("Vay") was educated in public schools.
He received his degree in civil engineering in 1904, but that same year (his father having died in 1903) he entered Harvard as a sophomore to study archaeology.
Although he took courses in a variety of fields, including Egyptology, his lifelong enthusiasm for Maya archaeology was soon evident.
The following year he received the M. A. degree from Harvard, and in January 1909, he accepted a position as a fellow of the School of American Archaeology of the Archaeological Institute of America (later the School of American Research) in Santa Fe, N. Mex. , where he acquired his first field training.
He never completed the Ph. D. at Harvard, apparently in part because of personality conflicts there.
Career
As a youth he developed an interest in archaeology, particularly that of Mexico and Central America, and corresponded on the subject with Frederic W. Putnam, curator of the Peabody Museum at Harvard.
He received the B. A. early in 1907, having already set out to visit Maya and Mexican ruins.
Morley's assigned field work at the School of American Archaeology ranged from the American Southwest to Central America.
In 1909 he returned to Yucatan for archaeological surveys, the first of forty consecutive seasons in the Maya area.
He undertook his first excavations at a Maya site in 1910, when work was begun at Quirigu , Guatemala.
Despite his youth, his efforts were successful, and in 1914 he was appointed research associate in American archaeology.
He continued to work under the institution's auspices until his death.
The program was initially on a modest scale, but over the next several years Morley made numerous expeditions into the tropical jungles of Central America, examining Maya sites at Copan in Honduras and in the Petén district of northern Guatemala.
Although Morley remained in charge of the Chichén Itz excavations until 1934, he was better known as an epigrapher than as an archaeologist.
Most of his reseach was devoted to the study of Maya hieroglyphic texts, many uncovered on the expeditions he undertook.
His work resulted in numerous papers and several lengthy monographs: An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs (1915), a beginner's manual; "The Supplementary Series in the Maya Inscriptions" (Holmes Anniversary Volume, 1916), an elaborate presentation of an important recurring set of hieroglyphic phrases, which facilitated their subsequent decipherment; The Inscriptions at Copan (1920), an exhaustive chronological analysis of the extensive inscriptions at one of the most important Maya sites; and the monumental The Inscriptions of Petén (5 vols. , 1937 - 1938).
His extraordinary talent for chronology permitted him to retrieve important dates from badly eroded and fragmentary texts, and he had an uncanny shrewdness in predicting dates of texts that have been established by subsequent discoveries.
Morley had a witty, warm personality and boundless energy and enthusiasm.
He was buried in Santa Fe.
[R. L. Brunhouse, Sylvanus G. Morley and the World of the Ancient Mayas (1971), provides Morley's complete bibliography, lists the obituaries and other references (published and unpublished) to Morley's life and work, and includes numerous photographs.
Robert H. and Florence C. Lister, eds. , In Search of Maya Glyphs (1970), reproduces extracts from Morley's diaries for the years 1916, 1918, 1920, 1921, and 1932. ]
Religion
Morley was reared an Episcopalian, became an agnostic, and finally was received into the Roman Catholic church a few days before his death.
Personality
Through his extensive public lecturing he was able to develop a large and enthusiastic popular audience to support scholarly study of the Maya, and he successfully stimulated other scholarly institutions besides Carnegie to undertake Maya projects.
Interests
Music & Bands
Morley was sometimes criticized as a mere collector of data, but although the sheer immensity of raw data gathered would alone ensure his importance in Maya studies, he was also an interpreter and synthesizer.
Connections
The father was from Iowa, but of colonial New England stock; the mother was of recent Belgian descent.
Morley's father, convinced that archaeology was not a practical career, sent the boy to Pennsylvania Military College to become an engineer.
He had one child, Alice Virginia, by his first wife.
divorced:
Frances
They were divorced in 1915, and on July 14, 1927, he married Frances Ann Rhoads.
married:
Gallinger
Morley was married on Dec. 30, 1908, to Alice Gallinger Williams of Nashua, N.H.
married:
Frances
They were divorced in 1915, and on July 14, 1927, he married Frances Ann Rhoads.
Daughter:
,
children:
,
Friend:
V.
Through a reorganization in 1929, the Carnegie Institution broadened its Maya program under the general supervision of Morley's old friend Alfred V. Kidder.
