Edwin M. Shook Archival Collection, Guatemala City, Guatemala

Background

Edwin M. Shook came to Guatemala for the first time in 1934 to participate in excavations of the Maya site of Uaxactún in northern Petén, Guatemala. At the time, he was a member of the Carnegie Institution of Washington research team. He was responsible for drafting maps needed by Sylvanus Morley for locating archaeological sites in the Maya Lowlands. He continued doing fieldwork at many important sites in various regions including the highlands (Kaminaljuyú among the most important ones) and the Pacific Coast of Guatemala, México, Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica until the Carnegie Institution closed the archaeological projects in 1958.

From 1955 to 1964, Shook directed the Tikal Project in Petén, Guatemala, sponsored by the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. From 1968 to 1979, he was named field director, and subsequently became director of the Monte Alto Project on the south Coast of Guatemala sponsored by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard University, the National Geographic Society and the Miami Museum of Science. From 1980 on, he devoted most of his time to do laboratory work and analysis of the ceramics and other artifacts from Guatemala.

Dr. Shook was a strong supporter of the Archaeology Department at Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG). He donated his specialized library in Mesoamerican studies, now the "Virginia Shook" collection, to UVG where it is housed in a special section of the university’s Central Library. In 1998, as his health was weakening and he had to move to a smaller house, Shook decided to donate his archives to our department. As an archaeologist dedicated to the study and protection of Guatemala’s national patrimony and heritage, our university was very fortunate to be the institution whom Dr. Shook trusted to care for his library and archive. The archive includes his field notes, maps, correspondence and newspaper clippings, illustrations, archaeological site records, and photographs. The field notes alone, written from 1934 to 1998, total 104 books of approximately 75 pages each. Because the paper records and negatives are perishable, we felt the urgent need to conserve and protect this important legacy for Mesoamerican studies. This FAMSI project has started this important task.

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