Copán Archive and Database Project

Project Priorities

After several months of organization and assessment, we concentrated our efforts in gaining better intellectual control of the three basic sources of information we determined to be critical for overall coordination of the CRIA collections:

• The Library and Archives, which is the repository for all field notes, reports, articles, books, published maps and drawings, and prints from other photo collections.

• The Photographic Archives, which is the repository for all negatives, slides, and prints, including photo description lists.

• The Sculpture Catalogue and database of over 28,000 sculptures, both free-standing and carved façade blocks.

[Note: The IHAH decided to undertake a new CRIA artifact inventory as an activity separate from this project during 2001. Also a partial database was begun in the Restoration Lab for treatment records, taken from existing card catalogues and forms]

With such a small team of people doing the data entry, coupled with the fact that we underestimated the level of disorganization and condition of the first two archives, we were unable to incorporate or link data from the general CRIA artifact collections in the grant’s time span. We felt the three main databases were essential to lay the proper foundation for future linkage between them and with other specific databases that might be prepared by individual archaeologists or inventory teams at a later date. Also, the PLALA grant and support from the Peabody Museum enabled a professional archivist, Sarah R. Demb, then of the Peabody Museum and now with the Smithsonian, to travel to Copán, assess the condition of the archives and make recommendations for their improvement and organization. These recommendations helped us to set new priorities for the records as we were carrying out the inventory, organization and data entry, such as rehousing mildewed folders or removing oxidized paper clips.

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