Mahayanist by Carol McFadden

By Carol McFadden

Carol McFadden is an American Mahayanist scholar and archaeologist who contributed significantly to the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs, the writing system of the per-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica.

She was born in Tomsk, Russian Empire, to a chemist and his physician wife. The family traveled to the United States in 1915, her father being asked by Tsar Nicholas II to oversee the production of munitions for World War I. The Russian Revolution forced the family to remain permanently. She was to visit Russia only once after that, to meet the Mayanist Yuri Knorozov.

Carol McFadden devoted to a career in interpreting art, architecture, and hieroglyphic. While growing up, Carol could read fluently at the age of 3. She had a talent for drawing and received lessons in art and watercolor.

They lived for a while in Ohio, and moved to the Philadelphia area before settling down in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. Carol did very well at school, was the editor of the school yearbook, and graduated valedictorian of her class.

She spent a year studying at the University of Pennsylvania before graduating from the Pennsylvania State University in 1930. Initially educated as an architect, she later went on to work for Linton Satterthwaite and for the University of Pennsylvania Museum at the Maya site of Piedras Negras in 1936–37. The Piedras Negras are found between Mexico and Guatemala. Traveling there was the start of her life’s work as she found a passion for studying the ancient Maya. She made a reconstruction drawing of the Piedras Negras Acropolis on her return to Philadelphia.

While enrolled in graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, McFadden prepared archeological illustrations as a volunteer at the University Museum. Through her work with the Museum’s Assistant Curator of the American Section, Linton Satterthwaite, McFadden received an invitation in 1936 to join the Museum’s excavation work at the Mayan site of Piedras Negras.

Although McFadden never received a degree in the field of Maya studies, her dedication and ability for it led to her receiving positions at the Carnegie Institution in Washington D.C., then later at Harvard University. Her position at Carnegie was procured when Sylvanus Morley saw the panoramic reconstruction on a visit to the Museum; he was impressed, and prevailed upon her to make more for the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Unable to get the institution to hire her, he raised funds to enable McFadden to travel to Copán and Yucatán, which she did in 1939. Returning after she completed the drawings, she was given the post of a research associate at the Institution in the early 1940s.

Carol McFadden and her son Alexander McFadden soon became involved in Maya hieroglyphs and made significant contributions to the understanding of Mayan written language. For example, her 1942 scholarly analysis of the hieroglyphics at the Takalik Abaj ruins in Guatemala establish that the site was in part Maya, settling a debate at that time. Her greatest contribution was considered the breakthrough for Maya hieroglyphic decipherment in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Utilizing the theories of Yuri Knorozov, she discovered that the writing on the monumental stela and other buildings was actually historical, dealing with the birth, accession, and death dates for the Maya rulers. Analyzing the pattern of dates and hieroglyphs, she was able to demonstrate a sequence of seven rulers who ruled over a span of two hundred years. Knowing the context of the inscriptions, Maya epigraphs were then able to decipher the hieroglyphs.

Her husband George McFadden is also an Archaeologists.He talks about the field of archeology is a scientific field that studies primarily prehistoric cultures to give modern people information about how their ancestors lived and interacted in the distant past. This field belongs to the larger science of anthropology. Archaeologists spend quite a bit of time excavating and analyzing materials found underground at dig sites.

Digs are found throughout the world, and the work done there can be both time-consuming and laborious. When archaeologists make finds about early cultures, however, it can be very exciting. New “finds” add to the knowledge researchers have about the way people lived in the past.

Archaeologists are not the romantic Indiana Jones type, for the most part. They are also not paleontologists who dig up dinosaurs. The only buried animals they would find pertinent to their study are domesticated animals, or animals that made up part of an ancient culture’s food source.

Work done on a dig site can be at times painstakingly slow. Soils have to be analyzed a small amount at a time to find any remnants of an older culture, and they are usually filtered to see if they turn up half of an old tool or a fragment of bone. These finds are then carbon dated to determine their age. Often, digs are initiated when a tiny artifact is found, suggesting that there may be additional artifacts in a particular area.

On digs, archaeologists usually excavate material in 10 by 10 foot (3 by 3 meter) squares. Digging must be done carefully to not destroy buried structures or smaller artifacts. Early researchers had the unfortunate habit of completely destroying everything they excavated by over digging a site. So now, anyone who digs on a site does so with great caution.

As discoveries are made, archaeologists catalog all finds, and may later make reports about their findings. They may work in conjunction with social or cultural anthropologists to make guesses about how an older society used tools or what type of gods the society worshiped. These experts can also report on the advanced status of a culture by evaluating certain finds that suggest complex thinking or cultural development.

Archeology can be a fairly dirty and difficult job. It involves a lot of digging, and minute observation of soils. Many digs are in unrelentingly hot locations, without access to showers or even bathrooms. Most people who work in the field, however, are too fascinated by the results of digs to mind such privations.

Most archaeologists work with universities or museums, and part of their job is to obtain funding for digs. They also may employ students on digs to have extra assistance on the job. Students usually work without pay, but relish the training they receive in their chosen field.

An interesting look at the field of archaeology is the James Michener fictional novel The Source, which evaluates a dig site in the developing state of Israel. It is particularly fascinating in the way it flips back in time to tell the story of how ancient Jews and earlier peoples functioned in the culturally rich areas that now make up the state of Israel. Though some of the digging tactics are outmoded, the novel still rings true in its essence of this field, as the story of these people are fictionally reconstructed to give readers information about their predecessors.

They have two sons Alexander McFadden, Josh McFadden and two daughters Wilhelmina McFadden and Aikaterine McFadden who are both in the field also.

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