ABSTRACT
In the middle of the past century, Clyde Kluckhohn (1940) and his student Walter W.Taylor (1948) launched energetic and caustic assaults on Maya studies, in general, and A.V.Kidder and the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Maya program, in particular. Ironically, at a time when Mayanists might have been celebrating the coming of age of their field with the publication of Sylvanus Morley’s (1946) massive 520-page synthesis, The Ancient Maya, they found themselves under vigorous attack. Here are just a few examples of this onslaught. First from Kluckhohn (1940:42-3):
I should like to record an overwhelming impression that many students in this field are but slightly reformed antiquarians.
