Requiem for Tania

[samuel.y.edgerton]

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>From: "samuel.y.edgerton" <Samuel.Y...@WILLIAMS.EDU>
>Subject: Requiem for Tania
>Approved: john...@met-net.com

Steve Houston has asked me to forward the attached to the
[usenet]. It's short, and describes a lovely ceremony held last Easter
Sunday at Piedras Negras when a group of old friends and students of
Tatiana Proskouriakoff, led by Ian Graham and David Stuart, carried an
urn with her ashes to the top of Structure J-23 in the center of the
Acropolis, and there buried it appropriately among the monumental ruins
she made so famous through her pioneering hieroglyphic discoveries and
watercolor drawings. Steve and his Brigham Young University and DelValle
Research Group hope to have a duly inscribed bronze plaque placed over
Tania's resting place, and this attached message gives information on how
and to whom anyone interested may contribute. Below is a scan of Tania's
handsome rendering of the Piedras Negras Acropolis facing the Usumacinta
River, where her ashes are now and forever entombed.

http://lanfiles.williams.edu/~sedgerto/piedras2.gif

Sam Edgerton
<Samuel.Y...@WILLIAMS.EDU>

Tatiana Proskouriakoff (1909-1985) Buried at Piedras Negras

Héctor Escobedo, Ian Graham, Stephen Houston, and David Stuart

On Easter Sunday, 1998 (non-Orthodox calendar), the ashes of Tatiana
Proskouriakoff, Kidder Medalist and Commander of the Order of the
Quetzal, were interred at Piedras Negras, Guatemala. At the suggestion
of Ian Graham, Proskouriakoff's former colleague at the Peabody Museum,
Harvard University, and with the permission of the Guatemalan Institute
of Anthropology and History (IDAEH), David Stuart brought her ashes to
this ancient city the week before the ceremony. After selecting a
suitable spot at the summit of the Acropolis (Structure J-23), a
construction immortalized by Proskouriakoff in her watercolor renderings,
Project members cleared an area of debris down to the original plaster
floor. A small cavity was excavated underneath. The following day members
of the BYU/DelValle team formed a silent procession that made its way
from the Project camp, past many of the pyramids and sweatbaths that
Proskouriakoff had measured and drawn some sixty years before, and up to
the Acropolis. Houston carried the ashes to the rim of the cavity in J-
23. Dave Stuart spoke about Proskouriakoff's status as, perhaps, the
greatest Mayanist ever, someone who had changed, with courage and
insight, our understanding of the ancient Maya by using hieroglyphic
evidence from Piedras Negras. This, the scene of her greatest triumphs,
was, to Stuart, the best possible place to bury her. Then came Monica
Urquizú, a prominent Guatemalan scholar, who described Proskouriakoff's
importance as a heroic role model for women in archaeology. Héctor
Escobedo, Project Co-Director, concluded the service by extolling
Proskouriakoff's contributions to the history of Guatemala. As a brisk
breeze whipped around the Acropolis, Escobedo placed the urn in the
cavity. Each of us helped bury the ashes by filling our hats with earth
and collecting stones of suitable size: the hole filled quickly. All
present felt intensely moved and honored: Proskouriakoff left no
children, but, on that day, we felt collectively her legacy and guiding
hand in our work and thought. Urquizú had collected jungle flowers and
fashioned them into bouquets of xate and orchids. These we laid on the
resting spot. Later, Project masons covered the rock-filled cavity with
high-grade cement. As of this writing Proskouriakoff lies in a building
that faces the swirling waters of the Usumacinta, which flows far below
on its way from the Guatemalan Highlands to the Gulf of Mexico. The
BYU/DelValle project wishes to affix a bronze plaque to the wall about
her tomb and solicits donations for this purpose, to be sent to: Evie
Forsythe, Department Administrator, Department of Anthropology, Brigham
Young University, Box 25522, Provo, UT 84602. Excess funds will be used
to consolidate the structure that contains Proskouriakoff's remains.