page_title: Sylvanus Morley
section_title: Context
hierarchical_section_title: Sylvanus Morley / Excavations at Chichen Itza / Context
caption_attribution_description: Español: Chac Mool, de Chichén Itzá.
context_page_description: Sylvanus Griswold Morley was an American archaeologist, epigrapher, and Mayanist scholar who made significant contributions toward the study of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in the early 20th century.
  Morley made extensive excavations of the Maya site of Chichen Itza that he directed on behalf of the Carnegie Institution. He also published several large compilations and treatises on Maya hieroglyphic writing, and 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.
context_section_description: Chichen Itza is about 120km (75 miles) southeast of Mérida, on the inland plains of north-central Yucatán. It had been known to Europeans since the first recorded visits by the 16th century conquistadores. During the conquest of Yucatán, the Spanish attempted to establish a capital at Chichén Itzá, but resistance by Maya in the region drove them out after several months of occupation. When the Spanish returned to Yucatán in 1542 they finally succeeded in establishing a capital at another Maya city, T'ho (or Tiho), which they renamed Mérida.
  Chichen Itza had evidently been functionally abandoned long before the Spanish first came, although the local indigenous Yucatec Maya still lived in settlements nearby, and even within its former boundaries (but in recently built wooden huts, not the stone buildings themselves). The name "Chichen Itza" is known from the earliest recorded Spanish accounts —such as Diego de Landa's— of these local inhabitants, for whom the site had long been a place of pilgrimage and ceremony. The name (chich'en itza in modern Yukatek orthography) means roughly "mouth of the well of the Itza", the "well" being the nearby Sacred Cenote (water-filled sinkhole) and "Itza" being the name of the people who were reputed to be its former inhabitants. Over the next three centuries after the Conquest, the site remained relatively undisturbed until the arrival of Stephens and Catherwood, although several plantations were established nearby.
  At the time its full extent was not at all clear, but today it is recognised as one of the largest Maya sites in the Yucatán region. How long ago the site had been functionally abandoned (not including the ongoing presence of local Maya farmers) was not immediately apparent, although it appeared to have been recently, in comparison with the seemingly older abandoned sites of the central and southern Maya region.
caption: A Chac Mool statue, first identified by le Plongeon but later extensively documented by Morley's Chichen Itza excavations. This type of statue (whose purpose remains unclear, presumed to relate to ritual sacrifice) is also characteristic of Toltec sites, and thus provided a linkage between Chichen Itza and Central Mexico.
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