(1850–1931) [Bi]
English soldier and scholar who was one of the first people to visit and make a scientific record of the great Maya sites of central America. Inspired by accounts of the ruins, he visited Guatemala and the neighbouring republics in the 1880s and 1890s. During this work he took photographs and made casts, plans, and drawings at such sites as Quiriua, Palenque, and Chichén Itzá. He was the first archaeologist to see the important ruins of Yaxchilan. Between 1889 and 1902 he published eight volumes of photographs and drawings of Maya monuments and cities, accompanied by a text, as Biologia Centrali-Americana. Appendix: archaeology (London). Maudslay's work is important because it was accurate and objective; his records remain a valuable source of information.
[Obit.: American Anthropologist, 33 (1931), 403–11]
