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J. Eric S. Thompson
Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson KBE (31 December 1898 – 9 September 1975) was a leading English Mesoamerican archaeologist, ethnohistorian, and epigrapher. While working in the United States, he dominated Maya studies and particularly the study of the Maya script until well into the 1960s.
Thompson was born on 31 December 1898 to George Thompson, a distinguished surgeon and fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Thompson was raised in the family home on Harley Street in London. At the age of 14, he was sent to Winchester College to receive an independent education.
In 1915, shortly after the beginning of World War I, Thompson used the assumed name "Neil Winslow" to join the British Army while underage. A year into service, he was wounded and sent home to recover, first in Huddersfield, then in Seaford. He continued to serve in the Coldstream Guards until the end of the war, ending his service as a commissioned officer.
After the war Thompson left for Argentina to work as a gaucho on a family cattle farm. When he returned to England in the early 1920s, he published his first article, on his experience in Argentina, in the Southwark Diocesan Gazette: "A Cowboy's Experience: Cattle Branding in the Argentine".
Thompson first considered a medical or political career. However, he later decided to study anthropology at Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge under A.C. Haddon. With the completion of his degree in 1925 Thompson wrote to Sylvanus G Morley, the head of the Carnegie Institution's project at Chichen Itza, to ask for a job, inquiring about a field position. Morley accepted Thompson, most likely due to the fact that Thompson had previously taught himself to read Maya hieroglyphic dates, an accomplishment that was highly valued by Morley who also had a passion for Maya hieroglyphics.
In 1926 Thompson arrived in the Yucatan of Mexico under the direction of Morley to work at Chichen Itza. Here he started working on the friezes of the Temple of the Warriors. In his autobiography, Maya Archaeologist (1936), Thompson referred to the friezes as "a sort of giant jigsaw puzzle made worse by the fact the stones had been carved before being placed in position" accurately describing his first field experience.
Later that year Morley sent Thompson to report on the site of Coba, located to the east of Chichen Itza. During the first field season at Coba, Thompson deciphered the dates on the Macanxoc stela. Morley, the foremost epigrapher, did not originally agree with the readings of the dates. It was not until a return trip to Coba that Morley was persuaded by Thompson's readings, marking his emergence as a prominent scholar in the field of Maya epigraphy. Within the next year, Thompson took post as the Assistant Curator at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He would work there until 1935 when he left for a position at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.
In 1926, while employed by the Field Museum, Thompson, under the supervision of Thomas A. Joyce and the British Museum, took part in an expedition to Lubaantun in British Honduras. It was the fieldwork at Lubaantun that led Thompson to disagree with Joyce's argument for the early "megalith" and "in-and-out" style of architectural stratigraphy. Thompson argued that the "in-and-out" constructions were due to root action. This root action disturbed the construction by pushing the rocks out in the fashion of the "in-and out" construction that invalidated Joyce's argument.
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J. Eric S. Thompson
Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson KBE (31 December 1898 – 9 September 1975) was a leading English Mesoamerican archaeologist, ethnohistorian, and epigrapher. While working in the United States, he dominated Maya studies and particularly the study of the Maya script until well into the 1960s.
Thompson was born on 31 December 1898 to George Thompson, a distinguished surgeon and fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Thompson was raised in the family home on Harley Street in London. At the age of 14, he was sent to Winchester College to receive an independent education.
In 1915, shortly after the beginning of World War I, Thompson used the assumed name "Neil Winslow" to join the British Army while underage. A year into service, he was wounded and sent home to recover, first in Huddersfield, then in Seaford. He continued to serve in the Coldstream Guards until the end of the war, ending his service as a commissioned officer.
After the war Thompson left for Argentina to work as a gaucho on a family cattle farm. When he returned to England in the early 1920s, he published his first article, on his experience in Argentina, in the Southwark Diocesan Gazette: "A Cowboy's Experience: Cattle Branding in the Argentine".
Thompson first considered a medical or political career. However, he later decided to study anthropology at Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge under A.C. Haddon. With the completion of his degree in 1925 Thompson wrote to Sylvanus G Morley, the head of the Carnegie Institution's project at Chichen Itza, to ask for a job, inquiring about a field position. Morley accepted Thompson, most likely due to the fact that Thompson had previously taught himself to read Maya hieroglyphic dates, an accomplishment that was highly valued by Morley who also had a passion for Maya hieroglyphics.
In 1926 Thompson arrived in the Yucatan of Mexico under the direction of Morley to work at Chichen Itza. Here he started working on the friezes of the Temple of the Warriors. In his autobiography, Maya Archaeologist (1936), Thompson referred to the friezes as "a sort of giant jigsaw puzzle made worse by the fact the stones had been carved before being placed in position" accurately describing his first field experience.
Later that year Morley sent Thompson to report on the site of Coba, located to the east of Chichen Itza. During the first field season at Coba, Thompson deciphered the dates on the Macanxoc stela. Morley, the foremost epigrapher, did not originally agree with the readings of the dates. It was not until a return trip to Coba that Morley was persuaded by Thompson's readings, marking his emergence as a prominent scholar in the field of Maya epigraphy. Within the next year, Thompson took post as the Assistant Curator at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He would work there until 1935 when he left for a position at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.
In 1926, while employed by the Field Museum, Thompson, under the supervision of Thomas A. Joyce and the British Museum, took part in an expedition to Lubaantun in British Honduras. It was the fieldwork at Lubaantun that led Thompson to disagree with Joyce's argument for the early "megalith" and "in-and-out" style of architectural stratigraphy. Thompson argued that the "in-and-out" constructions were due to root action. This root action disturbed the construction by pushing the rocks out in the fashion of the "in-and out" construction that invalidated Joyce's argument.