Q complex, Popenoe’s own discussion was quite different. It dealt with what today would be considered site formation processes, examining environmental data to explain the sedimentation and recutting of the site.

During a brief period of residence in Antigua, Guatemala, in 1930–1931, Popenoe came in contact with institutional archaeology through an acquaintance with Oliver and Edith Bayles Ricketson, who were directing the Carnegie Institution’s research at Uaxactún. Her scientific training as a botanist and her willingness to follow the advice of specialists like Tozzer and the Ricketsons created for her the possibility of an alliance with professional archaeologists. But as an outsider, Popenoe did not automatically view her research through the lenses of those questions that had been established as important by the authorities. R. A. Joyce argues in Women in Archaeology (1994), that Popenoe virtually disappeared from subsequent archaeological literature primarily because she wrote from a standpoint outside the emerging academy.

Like other women with informal affiliations during this period, Popenoe was able to practice as a field archaeologist because of her freedom from the need for economic support. A recent commentary on her life by Daniel Schávelzon (1991) obscures her unique position, describing her as representative of “that so-peculiar group of archaeologists that came out of” the United Fruit Company. Schávelzon assumes that Popenoe was part of a “closed and select circle of the United Fruit Company” with Doris Stone, the other female pioneer in Honduran archaeology. This quite natural assumption is contradicted by correspondence as late as 1932 in which Tozzer comments on the fact that the Popenoes had never met Samuel Zemurray, Stone’s father, and sketches an introduction for Stone herself. By subsuming Popenoe under the institutional aegis of the banana company, and by an apparently unsupported description of her as “rich and aristocratic,” Schávelzon overemphasizes the ways that privilege would have smoothed her way.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the difficulties Popenoe faced in carrying out her groundbreaking basic research. Not only did she travel to sites that were accessible only on horseback, without the accompaniment of her husband, but during the few short years she worked in the field, she gave birth to four of her five children. Self-trained, she nonetheless adhered to high standards of excavation and documentation for the time. Her work at Playa de los Muertos remains one of the crucial sources for the early prehistory of Honduras.

Rosemary A. Joyce

References

Barbour, T. 1933. “Introduction.” In D. H. Popenoe, Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala, vii–xii. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Joyce, R. A. 1994. “Dorothy Hughes Popenoe: Eve in an Archaeological Garden.” In Women in Archaeology. Ed. C. Claassen. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Popenoe, Dorothy H. 1928. Las ruinas de Tenampúa. Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Tipografía Nacional.

———. 1934. “Some Excavations at Playa de los Muertos, Ulua River, Honduras.” Maya Research 1: 62–86.

———. 1936. The Ruins of Tenampúa. Annual Report for 1935, pp. 559–572. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

Popenoe, W., and D. H. Popenoe. 1931. “The Human Background of Lancetilla.” Unifruitco Magazine August: 6–10.

Rosengarten, F., Jr. 1991. Wilson Popenoe: Agricultural Explorer, Educator, and Friend of Latin America. Lawai, Kauai, HI: National Tropical Botanical Garden.

Schávelzon, D. 1991. “Dorothy H. Popenoe y la arqueología de Mesoamérica (1899–1932).” Cuadernos de arquitectura mesoamericana 14: 93–95.

Tozzer, A. M. 1934. Untitled obituary of Dorothy H. Popenoe. Maya Research 1: 86.