Celebrating a Centennial of Indigenous American Study
Originally published in the 2024 issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine
MARCELLO CANUTO, DIRECTOR OF THE MIDDLE AMERICAN RESEARCH INSTITUTE & PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY, AND QUINN ARMSTRONG, SENIOR COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST IN ADVANCEMENT
To properly honor the 100-year anniversary of a donor’s gift, how do you measure its comprehensive impact? Tulane’s Middle American Research Institute (MARI) has been conducting and sponsoring influential ethnographic, historical, linguistic, and archaeological research in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and El Salvador since its establishment in 1924. Through field research, publication, student training, and the establishment of a world-renowned museum collection, MARI has made a significant impact on the scholarship of indigenous cultures of Middle America.
“A century ago, Tulane acknowledged that indigenous America had a complex and rich history that was important and worthy of serious and targeted academic interest. As MARI marks its centennial, we will continue our commitment to the study of ancient indigenous American peoples and their accomplishments.”
- MARCELLO CANUTO
A Timeline of MARI's History
1924
Funded by Samuel Zemurray’s endowment, Tulane establishes the Department of Middle American Research to house the William Edmund Gate’s library, which ultimately seeded the creation of the Latin American Library decades later.
1933
The institute’s second director, Frans Blom, travels with a team to Uxmal, Yucatán, to make molds of the Nunnery Quadrangle architectural complex. The molds were displayed at the 1933 Chicago Century of Progress Exposition (World’s Fair), exhibiting the zenith of late Maya art and architecture to an eager United States public for the
first time.
1930's
MARI participates in the first aerial survey of the Maya region.
1938
With a growing anthropological collection, an expanded library, and a new publication series, the Department of Middle American Research changes its name to the Middle American Research Institute.
1947
MARI’s third director, Robert Wauchope, becomes a member of the Committee on Latin American Studies at Tulane to develop an educational program on Latin American Studies in collaboration with Vanderbilt, University of Texas, and University of North Carolina. This initiative eventually gives birth to the Stone Center for Latin American Studies.
1980
Roland Scott Hall endowment is established to support MARI’s research initiatives.
1983
Robert Wauchope endowment is established for publications in Middle American Anthropology in MARI.
1990's
MARI Director E. Wyllys Andrews directs the Copán Acropolis Archaeological Project. Copán is one of the most important archaeological complexes in the ancient Maya world, and the long-running project sparks important breakthroughs involving dynastic sequences, epigraphy, and chronologies.
2009
Marcello A. Canuto becomes the Institute’s fifth director.
2012
Maria-Luisa De Ajubita Franklin Endowed Fund is established for graduate anthropology students to conduct field research in Mexico and Central America.
2013
Yvonne Effinger celebrates the remarkable impact MARI had on the life of her husband, Lt. Col. Clinton “Clint” Effinger III with a gift to enhance the stewardship of its artifact collections. With her support, priceless historical collections, including Aleutian objects donated by Clint, are protected from damaging UV and infrared light — securing them for generations of future scholars.
2019
A Hitz Foundation gift helps create MARI’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Lab, which analyzes and computes archeological data. This lab uses lidar remote sensing technology that enables MARI to gather highly precise data over large vegetation-covered areas, uncovering exciting new discoveries. Canuto helms a team that discovered dozens of ancient cities in Guatemala, including some 60,000 structures, with this innovative technology.
2024
The Hitz Foundation builds upon its previous cutting-edge grant with a $1.5 million gift, further increasing the lab’s research capabilities and making MARI an early leader in this mapmaking technology. The Clinton and Yvonne Effinger Excellence Endowed Fund is established to help MARI build on its century of trailblazing scholarship and lead the way in Maya archaeology for another 100 years.
MARI begins a new collaboration with the Universidad del Valle and the U.S. State Department to systematically train members of various community-based forestry concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) of Guatemala to conduct archeological resource management using modern technology.