Foreword to the Second Edition

Kubler, George

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Foreword to the Second Edition

George Kubler

The Art and Architecture of Ancient America: The Mexican, Maya and Andean Peoples

The manuscript which was first published in 1962 was actually delivered to the publishers in May 1959. No significant changes were made after that time, until Sir Nikolaus Pevsner finally persuaded me in 1972 that a complete revision and aggiornamento were justified. In effect the text was then thirteen years old – years which saw intense archaeological activity and revaluation. These newer publications are now embedded in text and notes, together with the older references, which were retained …

Author

George Kubler

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00123.003

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14185

Foreword to the Second Edition

The manuscript which was first published in 1962 was actually delivered to the publishers in May 1959. No significant changes were made after that time, until Sir Nikolaus Pevsner finally persuaded me in 1972 that a complete revision and aggiornamento were justified. In effect the text was then thirteen years old – years which saw intense archaeological activity and revaluation. These newer publications are now embedded in text and notes, together with the older references, which were retained in order to continue giving students some sense of that ‘history of archaeological recovery’ which the excitement of new discoveries often obscures. Recent archaeological writing in Americanist fields rarely assesses older theories and excavations that have continuing value. The substitution of new names for older ones is also frequent, without reference to the older work and the older nomenclature. It seemed worthwhile to retain some of this history of the recovery of the remote American past in the footnotes, all while bringing them up to date. Indeed it has perennially been the task of humanistic learning, to examine the long record of the search for enduring answers.

The original text presented the extremes of opinion on chronology. In 1972–3, the wide swing between extremes has narrowed closer to final rest, but much uncertainty still surrounds many questions, uncertainties which I have tried to convey wherever they are unavoidable.

The illustrations are increased by many new photographs and drawings, and some drawings in the first edition have been corrected and augmented.

To Yale University I am grateful for triennial leave of absence. In Mexico the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, both at the Museo and at the archives in Culhuacán, as well as in the offices at Cordova 45, cooperated generously in the search for photographs. My special thanks go there to Carlos Chanfón, Mariano Monterrosa, and Constantino Reyes; to Beatriz de la Fuente and Marta Foncerrada de Molina in Mexico City; and in London to Susan Stow, Rosa Brennan, and Judy Nairn who ‘accomplished the impossible in the least possible time’.

New Haven, June 1973

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