Remarkable Remains of the Ancient Peoples of Guatemala

This lavishly illustrated book provides a photo record of numerous sites and objects left behind by the Maya and other pre-Columbian peoples in Guatemala.

Jacques VanKirk and Parney Bassett-VanKirk settled in El Peten, Guatemala, in the early 1960s, started a guide service, and spent the next twenty years photographing both well-known and obscure ruins that they visited.

Many of the archaeological treasures have subsequently been stolen or destroyed, so that few if any records of them, other than the VanKirks' photographs, remain.Public interest in collecting Maya art exploded in the 1960s.

New ruins were uncovered, a lucrative, illegal trade in artifacts sprang up, and the VanKirks noticed with increasing frequency that sites had been damaged between their visits -- often only months later.

Inspired to record as much as possible before it vanished, the VanKirks soon gave up their attempt to photograph all of the more than five thousand known sites and chose instead to concentrate on those subjects they considered the most beautiful. Because they had to overcome problems of minimal light in the deep shade of the forest canopy and what were frequently worn, shallow images in the carvings, they designed a portable studio of sorts that included a powerful generator and several thousand watts of lights.

Marching or riding horseback sometimes for several weeks at a time, driving gamely over bumpy, muddy jungle roads, navigating rivers in dugout canoes, descending by rope into dark pits, crawling into caves, the VanKirks photographed stelae and altars, sculpted animals and massive human heads, and wall carvings and drawings as well as the remains of temples, palaces, and ball courts.Objects from museums and private collections were also included in their camera work. The materials are organized to correspond with three regions of Guatemala: the south coast, the lowlands, and the highlands.

Within these regions, photographs of well-known sites such as Quirigua, Tikal, and Seibal are interspersed with images of lesser known, often small ones such as El Bilbao, Itsimte, and Zaculeu.

The two hundred and twelve black-and-white and eighty-five color photographs, accompanied by informative, anecdotal text, will be of interest to armchair travelers, collectors, and archaeologists alike.