26 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
and the Peabody Museum, indeed, we are indebted for practically all that 
was known about Copan until within the past decade. 
Since the close of these larger operations, the site has been more gener- 
ally known and more frequently visited, particularly during the last 10 
years. No important contributions to its special literature, however, have 
appeared during this period, with the notable exception of Dr. H. J. Spinden’s 
work on Maya Art, which, because of its fundamental character, deserves 
especial mention here. In 1906 Spinden first began an intensive investiga- 
tion of the subject-matter and general principles of Maya Art; and three 
years later, in 1909, in a thesis presented to Harvard University for the 
doctorate, he was able to establish the course of its development and to 
arrange the monuments in a stylistic sequence which was found to agree 
precisely with the sequence of the dates actually recorded upon them. 
The results of Spinden’s researches were first announced in a chrono- 
logical table published by the American Museum of Natural History in July 
1910;! next before the Seventeenth International Congress of Americanists, 
held in Mexico City in September of the same year, in a brief preliminary 
paper,’ and more fully in 4 Study of Maya Art, its subject-matter and historical 
development, published by the Peabody Museum three years later.* Spinden 
first established his stylistic sequence from a study of the Copan sculptures, 
which are more extensive than those of any other Maya site, but the princi- 
ples of development, first worked out here, have since been found to apply 
throughout the Maya field. ‘This important discovery at once quickened the 
coordinate study of Maya chronology. It had long been held by the leading 
authorities that the closing dates on the different monuments, at least in 
the great majority of cases, correspond with the dates of their erection— 
in a word, that these terminal dates were the contemporaneous dates of the 
monuments upon which they were severally recorded.4| The accuracy of 
this view was speedily confirmed by Spinden’s discovery, for it was soon 
found that when the monuments of any site are arranged according to their 
proper positions in the stylistic sequence (the least advanced first, the most 
advanced last) the resulting sequence is identical with the chronological 
sequence, the earliest dates being found on the crudest monuments and the 
latest dates on those stylistically most developed. 
Indeed, Spinden’s stylistic criteria have proved so reliable that by this 
means alone it is now generally possible to date monuments as within fixed 
periods of 52 years in length, even when portions of the inscriptions are 
effaced. ‘This has been of great help in determining the age of fragmentary 
1Spinden, 1910. 2Tbid., 1912. 3Jbid., 1913. 
‘Goodman, than whom no one has done more toward deciphering the Maya inscriptions, held this opinion in 
part. He believed the Initial Series declared the contemporaneous dates of the monuments, and in many cases 
it is true that they do. (Goodman, 1897, pp. 147, 148.) Seler reaches a similar conclusion (1902-1908, vol. 1, 
pp. 783, 784). Thomas regards the theory of Goodman and Seler as the best yet propounded, but accepts it 
with considerable caution; indeed, he suggests an amendment, namely, that the theory be slightly more generalized 
so as to apply to the latest date in the inscripton (7. ¢., not only the Initial Series date) as that denoting the time 
of erection or event commemorated, which is the view now generally held (1904, p. 299). See also Bowditch, 
19034, P. 3. 
