Tikal Project

The planning for the Tikal Project began in the mid 1940s when Museum President Percy C. Madeira along with engineer John Dimick and Board member Samuel B. Eckert conceived of a ten year long Maya expedition to the dense forest region of Guatemala. Previous expeditions to investigate the Maya necessarily focused on more accessible sites such as Piedras Negras, Copan, Uxmal and Chichen Itza. Following the construction of a landing strip by the Guatemalan Air Force in 1950, Penn scientists arrived in January 1956 for what would turn out to be a thirteen year expedition.

The first three years were headed by Edwin Shook, on leave from the Carnegie Institute of Washington. The directorship passed to Robert Dyson in 1962. William R. Coe, already working at Tikal, succeeded Dyson in 1963. Coe supervised the site until it was turned over to the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Guatemala in 1970.

William Robertson Coe was born in New York City in 1926 and attended a succession of private schools before enrolling at the University of Pennsylvania. Coe referred to his early educational institutions as "snob schools" that "had little pertaining to what went on in the world." A self described "lazy as hell" student, Coe's interest in anthropology was fueled during a family trip to pre-Castro Cuba. While in Cuba, Coe and his brother, Michael, also to become a Maya scholar, embarked on a side trip to the Yucatan seeking the monuments they had seen in books.

Coe received his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His association with the Penn Museum began as a student assistant during the 1952-1953 school year. He was named assistant curator of the American section in 1959. Dr. Coe also worked as an instructor in the department of anthropology beginning in 1958 attaining full Professorship in 1970.

Dr. Coe brought his considerable skill in excavation, photography and draftsmanship to the Tikal Project. Coe's most impressive excavation involved a section of the trench through the North Acropolis. His massive drawing of this section is possibly the most complex recording of Maya construction ever accomplished. Dr. Coe's exceptional organizational skills were reflected in his conceptualization of a detailed system for recording the massive amount of information generated by the expedition. Dr. Coe's volume of the Tikal Reports, number fourteen, is an extensive work titled . The project produced sixteen additional volumes of the Tikal Reports, several co-authored by Coe and other investigators in the years between 1958 and 2012. Two additional reports are being finished at the present time. Assisting Dr. Coe in writing the Tikal Reports were colleagues Edwin Shook, Vivian Broman de Morales, Linton Satterthwaite, Robert Carr, James Hazard, William Haviland, Dennis Puleston, Christopher Jones, Marshall Becker, H. Stanley Loten, Patrick Culbert, Hattula Moholy-Nagy, Helen Trik, Michael Kampen and Virginia Greene. The dig also provided practical experience for numerous students who used the material as a basis for their dissertations. In addition, the Tikal Reports authors wrote scholarly and popular pieces for many venues.

Coe later directed at the site of Tayasol, southwest of Tikal and, in 1975, initiated the program at Quirigua, another Maya site in southeastern Guatemala. In later life, Coe spent time completing the publication of the Tikal Reports series. William Robertson Coe died in November 2009 at the age of 82.

The Tikal Project records contain 134 boxes of correspondence, financial records, post excavation notes/analysis, field notebooks, data cards, pre-publication material for the , plans, drawings, photographs, oversize items and a miscellaneous card file. The collection is completed by a wall length file cabinet for the original cards from the expedition installed in the Tikal Room of the Penn Museum. The forty-four drawers of original five-by-eight inch cards are cross-referenced. They are grouped by operation, lot, function and/or composition of the artifact, architecture, and a general index file. The headings in the general index file are listed under the general file heading in the finding aid. The entire card file is meticulously organized by the creator and did not need to be processed. All other materials were well organized in titled binders. The data in the binders was placed in folders within archival boxes, the original order and titles maintained, with the exception of the contact sheets which remain in binders on shelves in the Tikal Room. Throughout, the notes of William Coe have been designated and maintained as found including material that was marked as "superceded." Two groups of William Coe's notes were found loose in unmarked envelopes without apparent order. They were in poor condition and mostly undated. These were integrated with other notes on the same topic whenever possible or given their own folder. Six boxes of additional materials which arrived as processing was nearly completed were also integrated with the original materials.

In most cases, the drawings, plans and photographs found with the written and analytical materials have been moved to the corresponding visual series.

There are condition issues with some of the paper in the collection. Much is fragile and there are holes from the binder storage. Many pages have dirt and staining. In addition, there are numerous thermofax copies, some of which are photocopied for preservation and easier reading. Many of the plans and drawings are folded numerous times to fit in the original storage binders. They may need professional attention. Throughout the collection, there are items written in Spanish.

The correspondence series is divided into three parts. Tikal administrative correspondence fills archival boxes one to four with some letters in box five as well. The administrative letters include the correspondence with the government and local authorities in Guatemala, the agreement for the expedition, the equipment and shipping letters, problems with the "well dig" and camp labor and general administrative issues by year from 1948 through 1967.

The author correspondence is located in boxes five through eight. It incorporates the letters to and from the contributors to the Tikal Reports. They are filed alphabetically and arranged chronologically within each folder.

The majority of the correspondence is devoted to the letters found in Dr. William Coe's home. These communications involve many of the same individuals as the previous correspondence groups. Also, there are letters related to the establishment of the Tikal Association and the Tikal Museum in Guatemala. William Coe's correspondence files can be located in boxes nine through fifteen.

Correspondence can also be found throughout the collection with the notes or reports with which the creator placed them.

The financial series is contained in archival boxes fifteen through seventeen. It begins with three folders of correspondence. The first, general, holds letters about orders, shipping, donations, and inquiries about supplies. The correspondence with the Penn Museum, the second group, concerns budget items and expenditures. The third folder contains letters with attorneys and the Bank of London and South America. Undated and dated documents deal with the "power of attorney."

The next group of financial records is filed by year and includes receipts, pay vouchers, account pages and entire account books. Many of the pay vouchers are written by the employees and all have employee signatures. These are followed by financial records related to the Rockefeller Training Program and the FYDEP program. Additional folders hold records of budgets and accounts.

The field notebooks are stored in smaller archival boxes numbered nineteen to sixty-one. Most of the notes are in black hard-backed books but there are some loose notes of small and large size. Larger format loose notes are stored in folders labeled with the staff name and filed in boxes seventeen and eighteen. The small loose notes are included with the small books as they are of similar size. The notebooks are listed in this finding aid by staff name and the number assigned by Coe. All notes can be identified by the formula, "year. staff number. page number" placed at the top of each page. Some confusion may be averted in the case of staff member Peter Harrison(22), who also has notes with the numbers 23 and 42. Both Hans Gregersen and James Hazard share the number six. Robert Carr and M.R. Jones share the number nine. Anne Rick(33)is listed as Anne Meacham on some notes. While most of the books are true field notes, there are a few exceptions. Peter Probst(29)has a book labeled "photo index book". William Haviland(18)named one of his books "photos." Vivian Broman de Morales(7)has two "lab" books with her field notes.

The Post Excavation Notes series is the largest group of original data held in boxes sixty-two to seventy-eight. The first folders contain preliminary information and are labeled "Tikal Information No.1" and "Mother Data Book I." Tikal Information I is a listing of the operations, suboperations, lot numbers and excavators. The "Mother Data Book I" is a procedural guide that also incorporates some correspondence and data. The "Mother Data Book II" deals with the ceramic artifacts of the excavation. The directions for the wall enumeration scheme follow the Mother Data materials. Some other important areas of the post excavation notes include: C-14 and other analyses, identification of artifacts by group and by composition, burials and caches, ceramic and miscellaneous stone(MS)analysis, a list of catalogued objects and the architectural survey.

All of the data related to the writing, assembling and publishing of the results of the expedition are included in the series "Tikal Reports." The series is located in boxes seventy-nine to ninety-five and is introduced by the folders devoted to the writing parameters established by William Coe. The data proceeds in numerical order from TR12 through TR38. The first five folders contain the authors standards and drafting standards. The publication schedule follows. The next three folders hold "Black Books." These books have dividers for each Tikal Report number and include lists of jobs and the person responsible for them. There are some memos and correspondence filed with the numbered reports and a "to do list" is present for many of the products. Information for Tikal Report 18 has been loosely organized as this volume is still in progress.

The contributions of Linton Satterthwaite to TR 33A are located together in boxes ninety-four and ninety-five for convenience. Much of the data relates to the dating of stelae and monuments and includes tables and information that Satterthwaite has applied to other Maya sites. There are some Satterthwaite field notes from 1956 and the 1960s with this material. Other Satterthwaite data can be found with the post excavation notes series. Satterthwaite's drawings from the excavation remain with his notes.

The William Coe materials for his major written contribution, , arrived while the collection was in process. The original order of this material is maintained. The data is almost exclusively plans and drawings but some correspondence and some reports make up the remainder. Dr. Coe organized the materials by excavator number and by structure number. The plans and drawings remain with the data of the excavator responsible for them. TR 14 data is in boxes eighty to eighty-six.

The Plans series contains the smaller plans or those that were folded by the creator for storage. When the plans are larger, their location in the map case is indicated. The plans are grouped by location or by the Tikal Report to which they contributed. With some of this group are notes and lists pertaining to their publication. Some of the plans are annotated. The plans can be found in boxes ninety-five to ninety-nine.

The contents of the Drawings series are filed by location number or type of artifact in boxes ninety-eight to one hundred-one. This group contains many drawings by William R. Coe, especially burials. The series also holds rubbings, mainly of graffiti, carved pottery and the Maler's Palace site which are in the original order. Some of the sculpture drawings are signed by F. Clancy. The majority of the smaller drawings are field drawings.

The Photographs series contains prints of various sizes. The oversize photographs are indicated with their location in the map case. The smaller photographs are contained in boxes 102 to 131. Most of the pictures have roll and print numbers on the back. The subjects of the photographs include artifacts, pottery, rock sculpture, burials and caches, monuments and Temples, structures in the North and Central Acropolis and photographs published in Tikal Reports 12 through Tikal Reports 33. Some photographs are from additional sites such as Jimbal, Ixlu, Uaxactun and Uolantun. Photographs of the "mosaic pot and lid" and "mosaic mask" have some notes with them. The largest group of photographs are eight-by-ten prints from Tikal Report 33A. They take up eleven folders.

Photographs of drawings are a part of the photograph series. The folders are grouped by structure, object or composition and are contained in boxes 131 to 134.

The collection also contains thirty-three binders of contact sheets. The original titles are maintained. The binders remain on the shelves in the Tikal Room. Copies of Tikal publicity and articles from the popular press along with numerous reprints of scholarly articles from the personnel of the Tikal Project are located in the Tikal library.

The oversize materials include plans and sections, photographs and drawings. These can be found in the print and map cases.

Publication Information: University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives, 2/4/13

Finding Aid Author:

Use Restrictions:

Geographic Name(s)

• Tikal Site (Guatemala)

Personal Name(s)

• Coe, William R., 1926-
• Jones, Christopher, b. 1937
• Satterthwaite, Linton, 1897-1978
• Shook, Edwin M., 1911-2000
• Trik, Aubrey, 1910-1968

Subject(s)

• Archaeology--Architecture, ancient
• Excavations (Archaeology)