Lawrence G. Desmond, PhD

Wikipedia published the following statement about its Augustus Le Plongeon article:

“This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate (April 2009)”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus_Le_Plongeon)

Background on Augustus and Alice Dixon Le Plongeon

The problem—The biggest difficulty for historians of archaeology in any study of the Le Plongeons is distinguishing fact from fiction in writings about the Le Plongeons. Published material abounds that has not been fact checked, so it is important that references be provided.

And much published secondary source material is out of date. It is suggested that authors consult the recently acquired papers of Alice Dixon Le Plongeon archived at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. In that collection are also additional papers of Augustus Le Plongeon previously unavailable.

Augustus Le Plongeon’s (1826-1908) close collaboration with Alice Dixon Le Plongeon (1851-1910)

The article should more fully explain the professional collaboration of Augustus and Alice Le Plongeon. Alice was responsible for the Le Plongeons’ photographic darkroom work, and was behind the camera for a good part of their photography in Yucatán. She co-directed with Augustus the excavation of the Platform of Venus, and the excavation of the Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars at Chichén Itzá. The Le Plongeons jointly developed archaeological theories about the ancient Maya, and Alice edited virtually all of Augustus’ letters and published works. The collaboration of Alice and Augustus in photography and archaeology, and their development of theories about ancient Maya civilization are brought up to date in: Yucatan through her eyes. Alice Dixon Le Plongeon, writer and expeditionary photographer (2009). Scholarly reviews of the biography provide additional perspectives and can be accessed on ArchaeoPlanet Blog (http://archaeoplanet.wordpress.com/).

Alice Dixon Le Plongeon’s place in Maya studies has recently been noted by a number of scholars including emeritus professor of anthropology James R. McGoodwin at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

“[The book Yucatán through her eyes] is special and rare precisely because it is about a woman carving out her place in a realm heretofore thought to be inhabited only by rugged men wearing pith helmets and tall leather boots, sitting at their writing tables amid the ruins and smoking their pipes. Move over Stephens, Catherwood, Maudslay, Thompson, Morley, and all the other Old School Mayanists, and make room for Alice Dixon!” [James R. McGoodwin, Review dated: August 24, 2011.]

Critique of the article

Summary: The Wikipedia article requires a number of corrections, and needs to be brought up to date. Words in Spanish should include accent marks.

Critique

The Wikipedia article states:

“Le Plongeon has been identified as an early practitioner of psychic archaeology and his wife Alice Dixon Le Plongeon had an avid interest in mesmerism, séance, and the occult.”

Correction: Augustus Le Plongeon was an early Maya archaeologist, Americanist or Mayanist. 

Reference: The statement that Augustus was an “early practitioner of psychic archaeology” requires a reference.

Explanation needed: The historical development and practice of “psychic archaeology” for the periods “early” to current should be summarized, as should be the archaeological methodology practiced by Augustus and Alice at Chichén Itzá and Uxmal.

Reference: The statement that Alice had an “avid interest in Mesmerism… and the occult” requires a reference.

Correction: Alice was a practicing Spiritualist, and attended Spiritualist séances that were popular in America and England after the mid-nineteenth century.

The Wikipedia article states:

“In general, his [Augustus’] theories were considered to be somewhat outlandish by near-contemporaries and later Mayanist scholars such as Désiré Charnay, Teobert Maler, and Alfred Maudslay, and he is regarded today as one of the more eccentric characters to have worked in the field.”

Correction: Désiré Charnay (1828-1915) was a contemporary of the Le Plongeons and not a “later Mayanist.” He carried out photographic projects in México in the 1860s and during the time the Le Plongeons worked in Yucatán. In the 1860s during the French intervention, and after, etchings of his photographs were used to illustrate his popular books on the ancient ruins of México.

Correction: Désiré Charnay was not a “Mayanist scholar” or member of the academy, and was refused an academic appointment in Paris. He was an expeditionary photographer, explorer, and writer.

Explanation: In 1885, Daniel Brinton (1837-1899), professor of archaeology and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote that the discoveries of the Le Plongeons “correct, in various instances, the hasty deductions of Charnay…” (American Antiquarian 1885:378). In his diary, Alfred Maudslay (1850-1931) wrote Désiré Charnay “does not strike me as a scientific traveler,” and “was thirsting for glory” (Ian Graham, Alfred Maudslay, 2002:102). Maudslay was equally negative concerning Charnay’s writings about the Maya. Both Brinton and Maudslay strongly disagreed with the Le Plongeons’ theory that Maya civilization was older than Egypt civilization.

Correction: Scholar, photographer, and archaeologist Teobert Maler (1842-1917) was a contemporary of the Le Plongeons. He was in México in the 1870s, and again in the 1880s after the Le Plongeons departed, and carried out important site documentation, photography, and archaeological analysis published by the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.

Correction: Alfred Maudslay (1850-1931) was a contemporary of the Le Plongeons and investigated the Maya city of Yaxchilán, Chiapas, México when the Le Plongeons were in Yucatán. He continued his work in the Maya area for many years after the Le Plongeons departed in 1884.

Reference: A reference is needed for the statement: “[Augustus] is regarded today as one of the more eccentric characters to have worked in the field.”

Omission of Alice Dixon Le Plongeon: Alice Dixon Le Plongeon’s contribution to the theory that the ancient Maya founded Egyptian civilization has been omitted. Alice and Augustus collaborated closely in the development of that theory.

The Wikipedia article states:

“However, as a pioneer in producing photographic records of Maya sites and inscriptions, Le Plongeon’s works and images retain at least a curio value to later researchers and in several cases preserve the appearance of sites and objects that were subsequently damaged.”

Contradiction: In its introductory paragraph, the article states that Augustus Le Plongeon’s photographs have “curio value.” Further on in a section titled “Theories and later career” the assessment is changed to: “… his over 500 photos still remain an important contribution to American archaeology.”

Reference: The many published articles by the Le Plongeons about photography, and articles about the Le Plongeons’ photography can be quoted and referenced.

Correction: The total number of Le Plongeon photographs may be as many as 700. A Le Plongeon photo album, part of the Fundación Cultural Televisa collection and titled Yucatán ilustrado. Ruinas, México, 1876, has been recently been put on exhibit. It has 101 prints made by Alice Dixon Le Plongeon and is currently under study.

Background: The Le Plongeons took hundreds of stereo 3-D photographs of Maya archaeological sites, ethnographic subjects, and landscapes in Yucatán and Belize from 1873 to 1884. The Le Plongeons’ photographs were made using wet collodion glass plate negatives with a long tonal range, and the photos are the first systematic and detailed record of Chichén Itzá and Uxmal. Their architectural photos are useful to art historians, architects, and building conservators for analysis. They are also used for 3-D close-range photogrammetric analysis to generate scaled architectural drawings. Their photos of Belize may be the first taken in that ex-British colony. There are approximately 2,500 Le Plongeon photographic prints archived in public and private collections.

The Wikipedia article states:

“Le Plongeon was born on the island of Jersey on May 4, 1825. He attended and graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.”

Correction: Augustus Le Plongeon was born May 4, 1826.

Correction: Augustus Le Plongeon did not graduate from l’Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, and there is no record of his attendance.

The Wikipedia article states:

“While in London he [Augustus] met and married Alice Dixon…”

Correction: Augustus married Alice Dixon in New York in 1873.

The Wikipedia article states:

“Augustus Le Plongeon also had the opportunity to learn the technology of creating photographic negatives directly from the father of modern photography, William Fox Talbot in 1873.”

Correction: Augustus learned new photographic methods from William Henry Fox Talbot in 1851.

The Wikipedia article states:

“After he had made what he considered to be a complete comparative study of Maya and Egyptian religion, linguistics, and architecture, he [Augustus] concluded that Maya culture had been diffused throughout Southeast Asia by Maya travelers who then went on to the lost continent of Atlantis and subsequently the Middle East to found Egyptian civilization.”

Correction and clarification: Over a period of 30 years Augustus and Alice Dixon Le Plongeon proposed a number of routes that Maya “colonists” might have taken to the Nile Valley. One route was to Southeast Asia, then through South Asia, and into the Middle East ending in the Nile Valley; a second route was across the Atlantic Ocean; a third proposed the Maya traveled from Yucatán to the continent of Atlantis and continued on to the Nile Valley; and a fourth proposed that the Maya were actually Atlantans and separate groups of Atlantan-Maya migrated from Atlantis to Yucatán and to the Nile Valley. Alice Dixon Le Plongeon put forward the latter migration route after Augustus’ death and wrote an epic poem, A Dream of Atlantis (The Word magazine 1909-11) in which she presents Maya life in Atlantis and its destruction.

The Wikipedia article states:

“While most archaeologists of the early and mid-nineteenth century thought Maya civilization postdated Egyptian civilization, the chronologies were still relatively uncertain and Le Plongeon’s theory found some adherents.”

–and–

“By the 1880s, while other Mayanists fully accepted that the Maya postdated Ancient Egypt, Le Plongeon refused to yield to the new findings.”

Correction: During the 19^th century most scholars assumed that Maya civilization postdated Egypt, but there was little archaeological evidence to support that hypothesis. It was not until the 1930s that scholars were finally able to say with certainty that Maya civilization developed later than Egyptian civilization.

Explanation: In the late 19^th century, once the Egyptian hieroglyphic system was deciphered dating of Egyptian civilization soon followed. The first step in the development of a chronology for Maya civilization was the use of archaeological stratigraphy to determine its age relative to the other major civilizations of Mesoamerica. A relative chronology was delineated during the first decades of the 20^th century. During the same period, scholars worked to decipher the Maya calendric system. By the mid-1930s the Maya calendar was understood and correlated with the Julian calendar. Scholars were then able to say with certainty that Maya civilization reached its zenith during the Common Era (CE) and postdated Egypt. After World War II, C-14 and thermal luminescence dating provided absolute dates for many additional aspects of Maya civilization.

The Wikipedia article states:

“He [Augustus] named kings and queens of these dynasties, and said that various artworks were portraits of such ancient royalty (such as the famous Chacmool, which was excavated by Le Plongeon at Chichen Itza). He and his wife reconstructed a detailed but fanciful story of Queen Moo and Prince Coh (also known as “Chac Mool”) in which Prince Coh’s death resulted in the erection of monuments in his honor ….”

Omission of Alice Dixon Le Plongeon: Alice Dixon Le Plongeon was a major contributor to what the Le Plongeons’ believed to be an historical account of the lives of Maya Queen Móo and Prince Coh (aka Chacmool).

Explanation: The Le Plongeons’ history of the Maya was one generation in depth, and was based on the iconography they found on buildings at Chichén Itzá and Uxmal. Like most archaeologists of the 19^th century, the Le Plongeons had almost no knowledge of the subsurface cultural stratigraphy of Yucatán or the Nile Valley. Once the stratigraphy was excavated in the 20^th century a long period of development that preceded the civilizations observed on the surface was revealed. But, lacking knowledge of a developmental sequence, the only conclusion possible for the Le Plongeons was that civilization had to have come to Yucatán and to the Nile Valley fully developed.

The Wikipedia article states:

“Le Plongeon wrote that the sites of the central lowlands were not Maya at all, but were built by a different people much later than the sites of Yucatán. For example, he attributed the construction of Palenque to people from Polynesia.”

Correction: Palenque is not located in the central Maya lowlands.

Reference: A reference is needed for the statement “he attributed the construction of Palenque to people from Polynesia.”

Explanation: Alice and Augustus studied Frederick Catherwood’s illustrations of Maya central lowland sculpture and iconography as well as the photos and drawings of other scholars including Alfred Maudslay. They rightly argued that the style of architecture, hieroglyphs, and iconography at Yaxchilán, and other sites in that region was different from northern Yucatán. But, they were unable to accept a broader geographical range for Maya civilization that incorporated local cultural variation because their theory of Maya civilization and its diffusion to the Nile Valley excluded all art and architecture that did not conform to the art and architecture of Northern Yucatán.

Bibliography

Published books and papers about Augustus and Alice Dixon Le Plongeon by Lawrence G. Desmond, Ph.D.

Note: The full text of all materials listed in this bibliography (excluding Augustus Le Plongeon: Early Maya archaeologist and Yucatán through her eyes) can be read at:   http://maya.csueastbay.edu/archaeoplanet/

Books, doctoral dissertation, catalog of photographs

1983  Augustus Le Plongeon: Early Maya Archaeologist. Doctoral dissertation.  Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 3592.

1988  A Dream of Maya: Alice and Augustus Le Plongeon in Nineteenth Century Yucatán, University of New Mexico Press.  Co-authored by Phyllis M. Messenger.

2005  The nineteenth century photographs of Alice Dixon Le Plongeon and Augustus Le Plongeon.  A catalog of collections from: American Museum of Natural History, Donald Dixon Album, Getty Research Institute, Peabody Museum at Harvard University, Philosophical Research Society. Includes: Preface, Acknowledgements, Introduction to the Collections, 416 pages, and data entries for 1,054 images. Adobe PDF.

2009 Yucatán through her eyes.  Alice Dixon Le Plongeon–writer and expeditionary photographer. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Published papers

1988 Work in Progress: Enchanted Ground. In Mesoamerica: The Journal of Middle America, Vol. 1, No. 2, P. 10, Mérida, Yucatán, México.

1989 Augustus Le Plongeon and Alice Dixon Le Plongeon: Early Photographic Documentation at Uxmal, Yucatán, México. In Mesoamerica: The Journal of Middle America, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 27-31, Mérida, Yucatán, México.

1989 Augustus Le Plongeon and Alice Dixon: Early Fieldwork in the Puuc Region of Yucatán, México.  In, Juan Antonio Siller, Ed., Cuadernos en Arquitectura Mesoamericana, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Vol. 11, Series Arquitectura Maya No. 5, September, pp. 11-15.

1991 Registro fotogrametrico de la Pirámide del Adivino, Uxmal, Yucatán, México: Evaluación de campo, 1990.  In, Lorena Mirambell S., Ed., Consejo de Arqueología Boletín, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, pp. 75-74.

1989 Of Facts and Hearsay: Bringing Augustus Le Plongeon into focus.  In, Andrew L. Christenson, Ed., Tracing Archaeology’s Past, Southern Illinois University Press, pp. 139-150.

1996 Rediscovery: Exploration and Documentation.  In, Jane Turner, Ed., The Dictionary of Art, Vol. 21, Part X, pp. 262-264.

1999 Augustus Le Plongeon: A fall from archaeological grace.  In Alice B. Kehoe and Mary Beth Emmerichs, Eds., Assembling the Past: Studies in the Professionalization of Archaeology, University of New Mexico University Press, pp. 81-90.

2001 Chacmool. In, David Carrasco, Ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, 3 Vols., New York, Oxford University Press, Vol.1, pp. 168-169.

2001 Augustus Le Plongeon (1826-1908): Early Mayanist, archaeologist, and photographer. In, David Carrasco, Ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, 3 Vols.,  New York, Oxford University Press, Vol. 2, pp. 117-118.

2001 Prologue by Lawrence G. Desmond and Jaime Litvak King to Spanish translation of Alice Dixon Le Plongeon’s book Here and There in Yucatan.  In, Aquí y Allá en Yucatán. translation by Stella Mastrangelo Puech. México: Mirada Viajera.

2007 A historical overview of recording architecture at the ancient Maya city of Uxmal, Yucatán (México), 1834 to 2007.  In, Philippe Della Casa and Elena Mango, Eds., Panorama: Imaging ruins of the Greek and Maya worlds.  Zurich: Archaeological Institute, University of Zurich, pp. 6-13.

2008 Excavation of the Platform of Venus, Chichén Itzá, Yucatán, México: The pioneering fieldwork of Alice Dixon Le Plongeon and Augustus Le Plongeon. In, Paul Schmidt Schoenberg, Edith Ortiz Díaz, Joel Santos Ramírez, Eds., Tributo a Jaime Litvak King. México: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, pp. 155-165.

The album is owned by the Fundación Cultural Televisa of Mexico. It may have been part of the Museo Yucateco collection in Merida prior to accession by Televisa. The prints in the album are exquisite, and add to our knowledge of the photographic output of the Le Plongeons during the 1870s and 1880s in Yucatán. An exact count has not yet been made of all the photographic prints made by the photographer and writer Alice Dixon Le Plongeon, but extant are more than 2,000 in private and public collections. We will provide additional information about the album as it becomes available.

Featured in the exhibit is an album of over 100 photographic prints of the ancient Maya ruins made by Alice Dixon Le Plongeon in the 1870s. It is shown along with the work of such important photographers as Tina Modotti, Helen Levitt, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Greta Sager, Caecilie Seler-Sachs, and paintings by Frida Kahlo.

For additional information on the exhibit link to: Otras miradas. Fotógrafas en México 1872-1960 | Casamérica, Madrid

• Here is an extract from the review:

“MEX/LA” is not a show of art by Chicanos, and it is not a show about the Mexican avant-garde, although it includes works that fit both of those descriptions. Rather, it is a show about what the curators—artist Rubén Ortiz-Torres and scholar Jesse Lerner—call “Mexicanidad,” or “Mexican-ness.” To that end, it explores both the work of Mexican artists who made art in L.A. (not all of whom would identify as Chicano) and that of artists (Chicanos and others) who lived in Los Angeles and were influenced by Mexican culture or tried to interpret it for U.S. audiences.” September 27, 2011.

• Read the full review: PST, A to Z: “MEX/LA” at the Museum of Latin American Art – latimes.com

• During the 1930s, two well-known Mexican painters, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco, created public murals in downtown L.A. and Pomona. Jesse Lerner, co-curator with Rubén Ortiz-Torres, of “Mex-LA” at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, says the artists’ work had a ripple effect in the Southland.
• Lerner was interviewed by Southern California Public Radio and explained: “We were interested in using their presence in Southern California as a point of departure in thinking of the impact of Mexican modernism on the art world of Southern California and other exchanges back and forth between the arts communities of Mexico and Southern California.”
• To hear the entire interview on Southern California Public Radio: Mex-LA exhibit explores Mexican-American two-way street | 89.3 KPCC
• For the full exhibit description just go to the MOLAA link: MOLAA | MEX/LA: Mexican Modernism(s) in Los Angeles 1930-1985

The September 2011 (Vol. 1, No. 4) issue of the Society for American Archaeology’s

It’s edited by Prof. Bernard K. Means at Virginia Commonwealth University, and is an important source for anyone working on the history of archaeology. 

For those with an interest in the photography of Augustus and Alice Dixon Le Plongeon or their personal papers please go to Page 3 of this issue of the Newsletter. On that page are annotated links to finding aides for the Le Plongeon photo collections and papers archived at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and the Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Another link on Page 3 is provided to access all my published papers on the history of archaeology, the Le Plongeons, and a text version of my out of the print book A Dream of Maya about Augustus Le Plongeon. And downloadable as a PDF is a catalog titled: The Nineteenth Century Photographs of Alice Dixon Le Plongeon and Augustus Le Plongeon. The catalog is 416 pages with data entries on each of the 1,054 Le Plongeon archaeological and ethnographic photos taken in Yucatán and Belize in 1870s and 1880s. You can find a link to the home page of ArchaeoPlanet web site on the side bar under Blog Roll. A link specifically to my papers on the history of archaeology and the Le Plongeons is: ArchaeoPlanet: Lawrence G. Desmond writings on the history of archaeology.

Editor Means, in addition to his archaeological field projects, has focused much of his research on the archaeology carried out under president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s. The Newsletter keeps us up to date on developments on that area of his research.

In this issue he provides links to obituaries on the passing of the pioneer of the New Archaeology movement Louis Binford; French Egyptologist Christiane Desroches Nobelcourt who worked to save Egypt’s sites from the flooding of the Aswan Dam; and archaeologist Edmund S. Carpenter who led a crew of Seneca Indians employed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during president Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal to excavate sites in Pennsylvania.

The Newsletter has the following in-depth articles and notes:

• Histories of Archaeological Illustration.
• GIS for New Deal Archaeology Update.
• Recent or Noteworthy Publications.

Curated by Rubén Ortiz-Torres in association with Jesse Lerner, the exhibition MEX/L.A.: “Mexican” Modernism(s) in Los Angeles, 1930-1985, focuses on the construction of different notions of “Mexicanidad” within modernist and contemporary art in Los Angeles. The period from 1945 to 1985 is attributed as the time when Los Angeles consolidated itself as an important cultural center. However, this time span excludes the controversial and important presence of the Mexican muralists and the production of other artists such as Philip Guston and Jackson Pollock who responded to their ideas and later influenced other artists in New York and throughout the United States.

It is often perceived that Los Angeles’ Mexican culture is alien and comes from elsewhere when in fact it originated in the city—it was in Los Angeles and Southern California where José Vasconcelos, Ricardo Flores Magón, Octavio Paz and other intellectuals developed the idea of modern Mexico while Anglos and Chicanos were developing their own culture. This is the place where Siqueiros and Orozco made some of their first murals and Los Angeles is the capital of Chicano art.

The purpose of this exhibition is not so much cultural affirmation and/or historical revisionism, but rather to understand how nationalism and internationalism are modernist constructions that are not necessarily exclusive but often complementary and fundamental in the formation of Mexican, American, Chicano art and the art of the City. The exhibition’s historiography and non-linear narratives will explore different media, points of view and notions of art and culture including painting, photography, film, video, animation, lowrider culture and design.

For the full exhibit description just go to the MOLAA link:

MOLAA | MEX/LA: Mexican Modernism(s) in Los Angeles 1930-1985

In the exhibit are four copies of  Le Plongeon prints from the Televisa Collection in Mexico City. The copies of the originals were made specifically for the exhibit by Javier Hinojosa. The original prints in the Televisa archive were made by Alice Dixon Le Plongeon from photos (negatives) she and Augustus Le Plongeon took of the Maya ruins at Uxmal and Chichen Itza in Yucatán the 1870s and 1880s.

Update: On May 28, 2011 I posted that an album of  more than 100 Le Plongeon prints was on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City. That album is reported to be from the Televisa Collection, but currently archived and curated by the Casa Lamm in Mexico City.

Incidentes de viaje espejo en Yucatán y otros lugares

Inauguración: jueves 7 de julio, 7:30 pm

A las 9:00 pm se encenderá la escultura efímera de Cerith Wyn Evans que forma parte de la exposición

Alias Editorial, Lara Almarcegui, Jürgen K. Brüggemann, Stefan Brüggemann, Mariana Castillo Deball, Frederick Catherwood, Claude-Joseph Desiré Charnay, Alice Dixon Le Plongeon y Augustus Le Plongeon, Sam Durant, Cyprien Gaillard, Mario García Torres, Alex Hubbard, Leandro Katz, Pierre Leguillon, Mauricio Maillé/Gabriel Orozco/Mauricio Rocha, Jeremy Millar, Jonathan Monk, Henry Moore, Rubén Ortiz Torres, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Beatriz Santiago, Yann Sérandour, Cerith Wyn Evans y el espíritu de Robert Smithson.

Libremente inspirado por los viajes en Yucatán, Chiapas y Centroamérica de John Lloyd Stephens y Frederick Catherwood en 1839 y 1841, y el viaje realizado en 1969 por Robert Smithson por la península del sureste, la exposición presenta el trabajo de artistas modernos y contemporáneos que a través del turismo, la arqueología, o la antropología, se relacionan con el paisaje de ruinas antiguas y modernas para construir una nueva arqueología del presente.

Incidentes de viaje espejo en Yucatán y otros lugares » MTAC