The Map of Archaeological Sites in the Maya Area was the most comprehensive map of ruins in Mexico and northern Central America produced in the early twentieth century. The original version, entitled Ruins in the Maya Area, was prepared by Frans Blom and Oliver G. Ricketson, Jr., at the Peabody Museum of Harvard University in 1924 and 1925, under the direction of Alfred M. Tozzer. Blom (1932) brought the map and the accompanying bibliographic files to Tulane University in 1925 and supervised two revised editions. The final version, illustrated here, was prepared by Gerhardt Kramer and Salo K. Lowe of the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane in 1940 with a grant from the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The map, with its physiographic features, modern towns, and ancient ruins, included information from more than 50 ancient and modern cartographic sources, aerial surveys, information from contemporary inhabitants, accounts of explorers, and expedition records. The Index of Maya Ruins, housed at the Middle American Research Institute, provides information about each archaeological site on the map. It includes an alphabetic list, by section, bibliography of primary sources, and sometimes instructions on how to reach the ruins, name of the individual(s) who first reported the site, photographs, architectural drawings, detail maps, and cards with hieroglyphic inscriptions and readings of dates. The map and index were updated as newer information became available from the field, but this practice ended soon after 1940.

By combining visual geographic information (the map) with an extensive bibliographic card-index of the sites documented (Index of Maya Ruins) and photographs, this project established a crude geographic information system (GIS) for archaeological sites in the Maya area well before the dawn of the digital age.

Please click on the map sections below for detailed views of the Tulane Map of the Maya Area.

Blom, Frans. 1932. Archaeological and Other Maps of Middle America . Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv 6:288-292. Berlin.