THE RELIABILITY OF THE RUINS1

1. ¹ Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at the of the Colloquium Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin (June 2003) and at the Conference “"The Location of Knowledge" (Universidad Di Tella, Buenos Aires, December 2003). I would also like to thank Diego Aufiero, Teresa Chapa, Martha Garrido, Félix Jiménez Villalba, María Margaret Lopes, Isabel Martínez Navarrete, Gloria Mora, Javier Ordóñez, Andrea Pegoraro, and Fernando Vidal for comments and suggestions. Many of the materials quoted in this article were gathered thanks to an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship at Prof. Dr. Friedrich Kittler's Seminar on Aesthetics (Humboldt University, Berlin, 2002-2003), whom I would like to thank for his support and hospitality. This research has been funded by Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (PICT 2005 ET 3211) and CONICET (PIP 5675).

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Notes

1. ¹ Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at the of the Colloquium Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin (June 2003) and at the Conference “"The Location of Knowledge" (Universidad Di Tella, Buenos Aires, December 2003). I would also like to thank Diego Aufiero, Teresa Chapa, Martha Garrido, Félix Jiménez Villalba, María Margaret Lopes, Isabel Martínez Navarrete, Gloria Mora, Javier Ordóñez, Andrea Pegoraro, and Fernando Vidal for comments and suggestions. Many of the materials quoted in this article were gathered thanks to an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship at Prof. Dr. Friedrich Kittler's Seminar on Aesthetics (Humboldt University, Berlin, 2002-2003), whom I would like to thank for his support and hospitality. This research has been funded by Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (PICT 2005 ET 3211) and CONICET (PIP 5675).

2. Winckelmann complained that Alcubierre was “as familiar with antiquity as the moon is with crabs.”

3. The Pilots’ Corps of the Navy was established in Spain in 1748. In the Schools connected with it the students practiced navigation and the copy and design of plans.

4. In 1774 the engineers were divided in three branches: “Plazas y Fortificaciones;” “Military Academics in Mathematics of Barcelona, Orán, Ceuta and others”; and “Caminos, Puentes, Edificios de Arquitectura Civil y Canales de Riego y Navegación.”

5. In colonial times it included the present Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the Mexican State of Chiapas.

6. See Brasseur de Bourbourg, “Recherches” 29-32 for a long discussion about the real name of the ancient city found near Palenque.

7. J. B. Muñoz y Ferandis was born in Museros, close to Valencia, in 1745. He was charged to write the grand Historia General del Nuevo Mundo. In this mission, he gathered a very extensive collection of documents about the New World that were disseminated in the archives and libraries of Spain and American colonies. He died in 1799, having published just the first part of the work: Historia de Cristóbal Colón (cf. Brasseur de Bourbourg “Recherches” 7, note 4).

8. “Les auteurs qui ont écrit de l'Amérique Méridionale nous donnent une grande idée des édifices construits par les Incas, anciens Roys du Pérou... Ces seulement ont parlé en témoins oculaires, mais ils ne nous ont laissé ni plan, ni description exacte, qui puisse nous donner une juste idée d'aucun de ces monuments” (La Condamine).

9. “Nous primes, M. Bouguer & moy, les principales mesures pour faire le plan de ces Ruines. En construisant le mien, je m'aperçus qu'il me manquait quelques dimensions, je retournai peu de jours après sur le lieu pour les prendre, & pour observer quelques directions avec la boussole. Je dessinai aussi l'aspect du Château, d'un point de vuë dans la prairie, au bas de la platte forme du coté du Nord. J'arrivai à tems pour prendre ces mesures, je vis qu'on travaillons à la démolition du ce qu'il y avoit de mieux conservé, pour employer les matériaux à un nouveau bâtiment de la ferme voisine. On ne sera pas surpris qu'on ait si peu d’égard pour un ancien monument, dans un païs o[ugrave] les Lettres & les Arts ont fait peu de progrès, si on fait réflexion que la même chose arrive journellement en Europe, dans les lieux mêmes o[ugrave] les Antiquités sont le plus respectées” (La Condamine).

10. See Lothrop; Jiménez Villalba; García Saíz ; Cabello Caro for the list of the identified surviving Del Río objects in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional and later in the Museo de América (Madrid).

11. José de Sierra had worked in Barcelona and Andalusia. In 1819 he acted as “Brigadier Director Subinspector” of the Royal Corps of Engineers in Andalusia, where he was transferred after his stay in Guatemala (Capel et al. 450).

12. “Pero ¡Quién, Dios mío, había de discurrir que esta ocupación inocente, y haciendo parte de mis deberes, habían de hacer de ella un crimen y culparme de traición acerca de nuestro legítimo soberano Fernando VII! Unos ociosos moradores de esta ciudad y capitostes natos, aprovechándose siniestramente de la caída del excelentísimo Señor de Iturrigaray, me sospecharon ser Francés, lo que es falso pues soy austriaco de origen y de nacimiento, y de inteligencia con dicho excelentísimo señor, a favor de Francia” (Dupaix 10)

13. Humboldt had published the images but did not visit the ruins. The Paris Geographical Society organized a contest that for many years remained deserted.

14. DaCosta Kaufmann, inspired by Wolf Lepenies, has pointed out that “one outstanding myth of the eighteenth century has not yet been thoroughly challenged. This is the claim made by Johann Winckelmann in the foreword to the Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums, originally published in 1764, that he had created a new history of art which was distinct from a history of artists and also different from what had previously been written about antiquities” (523).