Sylvanus Griswold Morley (June 7, 1883 – September 2, 1948) was an American archaeologist and epigrapher who studied the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in the early 20th century. Morley led extensive excavations of the Maya site of Chichen Itza on behalf of the Carnegie Institution and published several large compilations and treatises on Maya hieroglyphic writing. He also wrote popular accounts on the Maya for a general audience.
To his contemporaries, "Vay" Morley was one of the leading Mesoamerican archaeologists of his day. Although more recent developments in the field have resulted in a re-evaluation of his theories and works, his publications, particularly on calendric inscriptions, are still cited. In his role as director of various projects sponsored by the Carnegie Institution, he oversaw and encouraged many others who later established notable careers in their own right. His commitment and enthusiasm for Maya studies helped inspire the necessary sponsorship for projects that would ultimately reveal much about ancient Maya civilization.
Morley also conducted espionage in Mexico on behalf of the United States during World War I, but the scope of those activities only came to light well after his death. His archaeological field work in Mexico and Central America provided suitable cover for his work with the United States' Office of Naval Intelligence investigating German activities and anti-American activity.
Early life, education and first expeditions
Morley was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, the eldest of six children. His father, Colonel Benjamin F. Morley, was at the time vice-president and professor of chemistry, mathematics and tactics at Pennsylvania Military College (PMC). His mother Sarah also had a connection with the college, where her father Felix de Lannoy had been a professor of Modern Languages. Felix (Sylvanus' maternal grandfather) was an immigrant to the United States from newly independent Belgium, where his father had been a judge in the Belgian Supreme Court.
When Morley was ten years old, he moved with his family to Colorado, and his secondary education was completed at Buena Vista and Colorado Springs. It was during his later schooling in Colorado that Morley first developed an interest in archaeology, and in particular Egyptology. However his father—a man trained in the hard sciences and who had graduated at the top of his class in civil engineering at PMC—was initially unsupportive of his ambitions. Seeing little scope for employment opportunities in archaeology, the Colonel encouraged his son to study engineering instead. Sylvanus duly enrolled in a civil engineering degree at PMC, graduating in 1904.
Nonetheless immediately upon graduating from PMC Sylvanus got his wish, and was able to attend Harvard University in pursuit of an undergraduate degree in archaeology. The focus of his studies at Harvard shifted from Ancient Egypt to the pre-Columbian Maya, at the encouragement of Peabody Museum director F. W. Putnam and the young Alfred Tozzer, a recently appointed professor at Harvard's Anthropology department. Morley's interest in the Maya may have stirred even earlier than this, according to his student contemporary at Harvard and later colleague Alfred V. Kidder. The 1895 novel Heart of the World by H. Rider Haggard, based on tales of the "lost cities" of Central America, was a particular favorite of the young Morley.
Morley graduated with an A.B. in American Research from Harvard in 1907. His first field trip to Mexico and Yucatán was in January of the same year, when he visited and explored several Maya sites, including Acanceh, Labna, Kabah, Uxmal, Zayil, and Kiuic. He spent several weeks at Chichen Itza as a guest of Edward Thompson, where he assisted with the dredging of the Cenote Sagrado. On his return trip to the US he carried with him artifacts taken from the cenote, to be deposited at Harvard's Peabody Museum.
In the summer of 1907, Morley went to work for the School of American Archaeology (SAA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where for two months he undertook fieldwork in the American Southwest. Here he studied the sites and architecture of the ancient Pueblo peoples (Anasazi). Morley made some significant contributions to the definition of a particular "Santa Fe" style of pre-Columbian architecture.
After the assignment Morley went to work permanently for the SAA, and over the next several years alternated his fieldwork assignments between the Southwest, and Mexico and Central America. Morley completed a Master of Arts degree at Harvard, awarded in 1908.
Carnegie Institution and Chichen Itza proposal
In 1912, at the urging of executive committee member William Barclay Parsons, the Carnegie Institution announced it would fund a department of anthropology. In December the board announced it was seeking proposals for an appropriate project; three proposals were submitted, including one from Morley to explore and excavate Chichen Itza.
The Institution approved Morley's proposal in December 1913 and one month later hired him to direct the project, but instability in Yucatán (an aftershock of the Mexican Revolution) and the World War, among other factors, would postpone action on the proposal for a decade. Excavation work at Chichen Itza did not begin until the 1923–24 field season.
While the Chichen Itza project was on hold, Morley conducted several expeditions in Mexico and Central America on behalf of the Carnegie Institution. He also published his first major work, An Introduction to the Study of Maya Hieroglyphs (1915).
During the First World War (1914–1918), Morley gathered intelligence about and reported on the movements of German operatives in the region, information in which the U.S. Government had a keen interest. According to subsequent investigations, Morley was one of a number of ONI operatives working in the region under the guise of conducting scholarly research. Their mission was to seek out evidence of pro-German and anti-American agitation in the Mexico-Central America region and to look for secret German submarine bases (which proved non-existent). Morley's archaeological work provided a ready excuse to travel the countryside armed with photographic equipment, and he himself traveled more than 2,000 miles (over 3,200 km) along the coastlines of Central America in search of evidence for German bases.
Several times Morley needed to convince suspicious soldiers of his bona fides, and was almost unmasked on occasion. In one incident in 1917, Morley was prevented from photographing an old Spanish fort by a party of Honduran soldiers who had been distrustfully monitoring his presence. He protested strongly to the local authorities, proclaiming his credentials as an archaeologist ought to be above suspicion. The local authorities remained unmoved, and only when Morley had arranged for a letter of introduction signed by the Honduran president Francisco Bertrand did they allow him to continue.
Morley produced extensive analyses (he filed over 10,000 pages of reports) on many issues and observations of the region, including detailed coastline charting and identification of political and social attitudes which could be viewed as "threatening" to U.S. interests. Some of these reports bordered on economic spying, detailing the activities of local competitors and opponents of large U.S. companies present in the region, such as the United Fruit Company and International Harvester.
As his later work proved, Morley was also a genuine scholar and archaeologist with an abiding interest in the region. However, his research activities in this period seem to have played a largely secondary role to his espionage duties. The authors of research into his spying proclaim Morley "arguably the best secret agent the United States produced during World War I". Shortly after the war several of Morley's contemporaries voiced their misgivings over the duplicitous nature of the espionage work that Morley and several of his colleagues had been suspected of. One notable critic, the famous anthropologist Franz Boas, published a letter of protest in the December 20, 1919 edition of The Nation. Without naming the suspected archaeologists, Boas' letter denounced these Central American operatives who had "prostituted science by using it as a cover for their activities as spies". Ten days after the letter was published, the American Anthropological Association censured Boas for this action in a 21-to-10 formal vote on a resolution distancing the AAA from Boas' views. The ethical debate surrounding such "archaeologist-spies" continues into the present, with some commentators noting the dangers and suspicion it throws upon others engaged in legitimate archaeological fieldwork, particularly those who work or seek to work in "sensitive" government-controlled areas.