Signedstamped logo: CASELLA / LONDON
Inscribedstamped on alidade: H. R. / INSTITUTE OF / GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATION / HARVARD UNIVERSITY
serial number: No. 9089
stamped on rule: P M # 27
Historical AttributesThe Casella catalogue of 1920 observed that the Reeve's pattern folding plane table alidade was "particularly recommended for explorers and travellers."
According to a tag on the case, this plane table alidade was a "Gift of Prof. Steven Stephen Williams, Peabody Museum, Received by him from Carnegie Institute of Washington—Division of History. S. V. Morley and A. V. Kidder. Maya Archaeology, (Period 1920-1950)."
Sylvanus Griswold Morley (1883-1948) and Alfred V. Kidder (1885-1963) were students together at Harvard and later colleagues in the study of Mayan archaeology. Morley understook extensive excavations of the Maya site of Chichen Itza as director of the project for the Carnegie Institution. Kidder began his career by conducting expeditions to the American southwest in New Mexico and Arizona under the sponsorship of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. He was also connected to the Carnegie Institution, first as an associate in charge of archaeological investigations (1927–1929) and then as chairman of the division of historical research (1929–1950) during which he did research in the Guatemalan highlands on Mayan stratigraphy. In 1939 he became honorary curator of Southwestern American archaeology at the Peabody Museum, Harvard.
The donor, Stephen Williams (b. 1926), is an archeologist at Harvard University, currently holding the title of Peabody Professor of North American Archeology and Ethnography, Emeritus.
Prior to ending up at the Carnegie Institution, the plane table alidade was the property of the Institute of Geographical Exploration at Harvard. The initials "H. R." on the instrument may refer to A. Hamilton Rice, Jr., the geographer and explorer who built the Institute of Geographical Exploration in 1929 and served as its director.
Primary SourcesCasella, London, Surveying and Drawing Instruments and Appliances, catalogue no. 564 (London: C. F. Casella & Co. Ltd., c. 1920), 64.
ProvenanceA. Hamilton Rice, Jr; Institute of Geographical Exploration, Harvard University; Carnegie Institution, Washington, DC, where Sylvanus Morley and Alfred V. Kidder may have used it; gift to CHSI from Professor Stephen Williams, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard.