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| | Table of Contents and Excerpt, Evans, Romancing the Maya |
 | | At Chicago the installment of life-size Maya temples, cast in plaster, evoked a sense of virtual reality for fairgoers; arranged in a Stonehenge-like configuration, these structures were landscaped with clinging vegetation and were artificially aged to simulate their decay, re-creating the romantic settings of Catherwood's engravings. |
 | | This bracketing does not imply, however, that no important discoveries preceded Latin American independence or that nineteenth-century explorers in the region were the first to link archaeology and national mythmaking (the Aztecs themselves had transported Toltec artifacts to their capital as evidence of their mythologized descent from this group). |
 | | Although this is true, it is important to note the disappearance of the amateur American archaeologist from this period forward; by 1915 at the latest, figures like Stephens, Charnay, or Le Plongeon had been replaced in the field by professional archaeologists working for institutions like the Smithsonian or university-affiliated museums. |
| www.utexas.edu /utpress/excerpts/exevarom.html (2927 words) |
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