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Accepted Paper:

Alfred Maudslay's causality dilemma. Photography, Archaeology and the influence of nineteenth century travel literature.  
Duncan Shields (De Montfort University)

Paper short abstract:

This paper will attempt to account for the relationship between travel literature of the nineteenth century and the photography of archaeological surveys in the work of Alfred Maudslay.

Paper long abstract:

Alfred Maudslay's archaeological work is well documented, yet many studies of his contributions to archaeological knowledge rely entirely on his literary productions or his collection of casts and objects removed from Central American Maya sites. The large collection of photographs Maudslay took is rarely used beyond contextual visualisations of Maya sites or biographical representations of his fieldwork.

Maudslay's relationship with the seminal travel narrative Incidents of Travel in Central America (1841) by Catherwood and Stephens has also been noted but never explored. This book, one of the most popular travel books of the nineteenth century, was the inspiration for Maudslay's fourteen year long fieldwork and could be seen as the template for his journeys.

This paper will aim to account for the close visual correlation between the Catherwood lithographs and the eight hundred photographs Maudslay produced between 1881 and 1894. It will suggest that Maudslay's journeys were more than mere imitation but a phenomenological recreation of Catherwood and Stephens journeys with the intention to produce an objective visual representation of Mesoamerican archaeology. In doing so, it will suggest that Maudslay's photographs were not simply an aide-de-memoire or autobiographical snapshot but the raison d'ĂȘtre of Maudslay's initiation in to the archaeological field. It will suggest that it was the recognition of a severe lack of accurate information in Catherwood's drawings and a realisation of the potential for photography to act within this role that initiated Maudslay's initial surveys of Maya sites rather than an overriding interest in Mayan archaeology

Panel P30
Archaeology and Photography
  Session 1