Pre-Columbian Photo & Fieldwork Collection

The Pre-Columbian Photograph and Fieldwork Collection comprises over 5,000 photographs (black-and-white prints, black-and-white negatives, color transparencies and color slides), as well as original paintings, drawings, maps, rubbings, and prints that document objects and places associated with historical and archaeological studies in Mesoamerica, the Intermediate Area, and the Andes. These graphic reproductions include objects in the Museum’s collection, objects in other collections, archaeological sites and architecture, monuments, maps, major codices, and illustrations.

Some of the main sub-collections include photographs of the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art; the Maya Ceramic Archive comprises photographs taken by Nicholas Hellmuth of over 1300 Maya ceramic objects and 40 jade, stone and shell objects; the Paracas Textile Archive includes photographs by Anne Paul of around 2000 objects, mostly Paracas textiles, excavated from the Necropolis of Paracas in 192–28; the Roosevelt and Cross Archive has photographs taken in 1934 by Cornelius van S. Roosevelt and Richard J. Cross of archaeological sites and landscapes in Peru’s Santa Valley and Chavín de Huántar; the Thompson Expedition Archive comprises prints from Edward H. Thompson’s explorations of Labná and the Cave of Loltun, taken between 1888 and 1891.