- Home
- history
- social science
- biography & autobiography
- Alfred Maudslay and the Maya
Alfred Maudslay and the Maya
A Biography
by Ian Graham
Published by: University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint: University of Oklahoma Press
In this fascinating biography, the first ever published about Alfred Maudslay (1850-1931), Ian Graham describes this extraordinary Englishman and his pioneering investigations of the ancient Maya ruins.
Maudslay, the grandson of a famous English inventor and engineer, spent his formative adult years in the South Seas as a junior official in Great Britain’s Colonial Office. Despite his exotic experiences, he did not find his true vocation until the age of thirty-one, when he arrived in Guatemala.
Maudslay played a crucial role in exploring and documenting the monuments and architecture of the ancient Maya ruins at Palengue Copán, Chichén Itzá, and other sites previously unknown. His photographs and plaster casts have proven to be invaluable in the deciphering of Maya hieroglyphics. Personal resources allowed him to undertake fieldwork at a time when no institution provided such support. He made plaster casts of large stone monuments, accurate maps of sites, and painstaking recordings of inscriptions. His Biologia Centrali-Americana, a multivolume compendium of photographs, drawings, plans, and text published almost a century ago, remains an essential foundation for Maya studies. Perhaps Maudslay’s greatest legacy is magnificent collection of glass-negative photographs, many of which are reproduced in this book.
Ian Graham is the author of Archaeological Explorations in El Peten, Guatemala. He has spent more than forty years exploring the Maya area. Graham is Director Emeritus of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, a program that he inaugurated in 1975 at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.
Forthcoming Events

Book Signing with Connie Cronley at Best of Books
Saturday. May 21, 2022 | 2:00 pm
Best of Books 1313 East Danforth Rd. Kickingbird Square Edmond, OK 73034
Read more
Jill Hunting in Conversation with Mike Everhart at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History
Thursday. June 16, 2022 | 6:00 pm
Sternberg Museum of Natural History 3000 Sternberg Dr. Hays, KS 67601
Read more
Meet Jill Hunting at Flint Hills Books
Saturday. June 18, 2022 | 1:30 pm
Flint Hills Books 130 W. Main Council Grove, Kansas 66846
Read more
Author Talk with Jill Hunting at Full Circle Books
Tuesday. June 21, 2022 | 6:00 pm
Full Circle Books 50 Penn Place 1900 NW Expressway, Oklahoma City, OK 73118
Read more