Fieldwork Among the Maya: Reflections on the Harvard Chiapas Project

Fieldwork Among the Maya is a personal chronicle of the Harvard Chiapas Project, written by the man who initiated it in 1957 and guided it through thirty-five years of intensive ongoing research. Beginning with his childhood in New Mexico and insights into how and why he became an anthropologist, Vogt moves on to describe the major features of the Chiapas Project, which was a long-range ethnographic program to describe systematically, for the first time, and to analyze the Tzotzil-Maya cultures of the remote highlands of Chiapas. The goal was to understand how these contemporary Mayas are related to the prehistoric Classic Maya and how their cultures are changing as they confront the modern world. Maintaining a delicate balance between the technical and the personal, Vogt comments on changes in anthropological styles and methods, describes in vivid terms (often humorous, sometimes poignant) the day-to-day lives of the researchers and their informants, and depicts clearly the joys, the rewards, and the hazards encountered in the field by social anthropologists.

Evon Z. Vogt is professor emeritus of anthropology at Harvard University.