Guatemalan and Mexican Indigenous Language Studies Archive, Harvard Anthropological Research, 1907–1921

Indigenous Languages in Guatema and Mexico

Archive

[Indigenous] [Linguistics] [Anthropology] Tozzer, Alfred Marston. A Comparative Study of the Mayas and the Lacandones (1907) and A Maya Grammar (1921), two early twentieth-century works that document Indigenous Maya language and lifeways while illustrating the methodological and ideological frameworks of U.S. anthropology in Mesoamerica. Produced through fieldwork conducted between 1902 and 1905 and subsequent academic synthesis, these publications record linguistic structures, material culture, and social organization among Yucatec and Lacandon Maya communities in Mexico and Guatemala. Tozzer’s research contributed to the institutionalization of Mesoamerican studies within American universities, while also embedding Indigenous knowledge within interpretive systems shaped by colonial and racialized assumptions characteristic of the period.

Archive of two works issued 1907–1921.
[1] Tozzer, Alfred M. A Comparative Study of the Mayas and the Lacandones. New York: Published for the Archaeological Institute of America by Macmillan, 1907. First edition. 191 pages. 8vo. Illustrated with photographic plates. Issued in original printed wrappers. Based on fieldwork among Yucatec and Lacandon Maya communities in Yucatán and Chiapas, the study presents comparative analysis of environment, subsistence, kinship, ritual practice, and bodily presentation, offering one of the earliest extended English-language ethnographies of the Lacandon Maya.
[2] Tozzer, Alfred M. A Maya Grammar, with Bibliography and Appraisement of the Works Noted. Cambridge: Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 1921. First edition. 8vo. Issued in original printed wrappers. A comprehensive linguistic study of Yucatec Maya, analyzing phonetics, morphology, and syntax alongside a critical bibliography of prior scholarship, consolidating early twentieth-century academic approaches to Indigenous Mesoamerican languages.

Together these works trace the convergence of linguistic documentation and ethnographic observation at a moment when Indigenous cultures were being systematically recorded within Western academic institutions, often under frameworks that both preserved and reframed Indigenous knowledge. The 1907 volume captures detailed visual and descriptive records of Lacandon and lowland Maya life, while the 1921 grammar reflects efforts to formalize Indigenous language within comparative linguistic scholarship. Missing front cover and detached rear wrapper to the 1907 volume, with some unopened pages; binding intact and contents clean. The 1921 volume with fragile wrappers showing minor chipping, institutional stamp for Prof. Dr. Johannes Rahder of Yale University; binding sound and pages clean. Overall good to very good condition.

Item #22879

Price: $750.00