From a young age Merle Greene Robertson had a love of art. Born in Montana, USA (1913) to a family that valued the outdoors as well as education for women, she was blessed with parents that nurtured her love of art. Her parents were so thrilled and proud of her passion that they allowed her to draw on the walls of their family home. As a girl she was also lucky enough to have Charles M. Russell, the American Old West artist, as her neighbour. However, during the Great Depression Robertson’s family moved to Seattle. Here she continued to develop her talent as she attended the University of Washington in Seattle, studying both graphic and architectural design.
Robertson is most renowned for her development of ‘rubbings’, a technique that involves transferring the details of a face of a monument onto paper. In 1962 she carried out her first paper rubbing at an archaeological project she joined out in Tikal, Guatemala. Her creativity and technique impressed one of the leading scholars present at the project, who duly suggested that she carry out the rubbing technique she had created on all the other sites within the Peten region. Robertson took up the task promptly and enthusiastically.
She became seriously engaged in recording the relied sculpture stones of ancient Maya sites in Chichen Itza, Palenque, and elsewhere in Central America through her unique technique. Her dedication was evident through her determination to endure very harsh conditions for her work, finding herself in one circumstance having to survive off just a thimble of water.
Robertson was very particular on how she carried out her rubbing sketches. She emphasised two key rules when conducting them:
- The original monuements must not be blemished in any shape or form. Therefore, no pigment should be allowed to come into contact with the stone.
- The rubbing must be authentic, no embellishments should be added to it, nor any 20th Century additions or any process that would aid the definition of the rubbing.
Due to erosion and graffiti, many of her sketches are the only real images left of these bas reliefs, and in order to make her work more accessible, Robertson also quickly adapted to the age of computers. Having uploaded her rubbings on CD-ROM, she also went on to develop a website on the internet for her work. As well as this, more than 2,000 of these pieces are located at Tulane University’s Latin American Library in New Orleans, as they continue to help historians uncover key information about the complex Maya culture and writing system.
Many of Robertson’s milestones in her career are linked to the archaeological site of Palenque. Along with the lead archaeologist Alfonso Morales and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Robertson was a director on a dig at Palenque. As well as this, from December 1973 Robertson led a series of Palenque Round Table conferences, whichconvened for eight meetings, with the final meeting being help in June 1993. The meetings were held to further explore Palenque and the study of Maya literature. Within Robertson’s rubbings, a myriad of different ways of life in Palenque were depicted, and so these greatly aided the discussion at these meetings. Through these meetings the academics present pinned down a series of dates that depict the succession of rulers, as well as what occurred during their period of rule in the Maya culture.
Panorama of Palenque. Image: Wikimedia Commons, user BIOLOGO JORGE AYALA
Ed. note, further discoveries/ Merle taught Meso-American archeology at Robert Louis Stevenson school in Pebble Beach from 1968 to 1976. The course included annual trips to Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras to visit Mayan sites. The students worked as interns clearing and mapping sites, and cleaning and recording newly discovered ancient monuments. /
On the 22nd of April 2011 Robertson, aged 97, passed away. The great contributions she gave to the study of Maya through her work proceed her though. Her academic achievements are numerous. Her Pre-Colombian Art Research Institute continues to publish important monographs in the field of Maya studies. She is immortalised by her published memoirs called “Never in Fear”, the title of which greatly sums up her outlook on life and her taste for adventure.
Sources:
de Young Legion of Honor – Fine Arts Museums of San Fransisco
Further Reading:
Guest Post by Holly Mill as part of the 2021 UCL TrowelBlazers Digital Fieldwork Project.
From the archives! BH ~ I did want to add some info on Merle. I actually met her when she was teaching at Robert Louis Stevenson School in Pebble Beach back in the late 1960s. Several of my friends went on her annual field trips to Central America. She was an inspirational educator (RLS was all boys at that time) and all of them remember her classes and her trips as some of the best they ever had. Most notably of the Stevenson students to do so is Arlen Chase who credits her for the reason he became an archeologist. — F.K.