TRIBAL people Michael D. Coe: Distinguished Professor of Mesoamerican Studies One of the world’s most accomplished scholars of the ancient cultures of Mesoamerica is Michael D. Coe, Charles J. McCurdy Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Yale University. He has had a long and distinguished career. He began his work in Mesoamerica with an archaeological excavation on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, an area rich in Early Formative sites. His great “dirt work,” as he puts it, was at the Olmec site of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, on the East Coast of Mexico, near the city of Veracruz. Among other accomplishments, with his bare hands he dug out of the earth one of the most prized Olmec stone sculptures, Monument 34, all the more familiar after its iconic inclusion in Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in late 2010. Coe also was a significant contributor to the decipherment of Maya glyphs. Unusual for anthropologists, Coe has also contributed to the field of art history, willing—even eager— to see ancient artifacts produced by such civilizations as the Olmec and the Maya as significant and beautiful works of art. Coe is a prolific and distinguished author and has written everything from academic monographs to art museum catalogs to overviews of the ancient cultures of Mesoamerica. His publications include The Jaguar’s Children: Pre-Classic Central Mexico (Museum of Primitive Art, 1965), Lords of the Underworld: Masterpieces of Classic Maya Ceramics (Princeton University Press, 1978), In the Land of the Olmec (with Richard Diehl, University of Texas Press, 1980), Breaking the Maya Code (Thames and Hudson, 1992 and 1999), and The Art of the Maya Scribe (with Justin Kerr, Thames and By Forrest D. Colburn FIG. 2: Miguel Covarrubias (1904–1957), Untitled (colossal Olmec head being discovered in Vera Cruz), c. 1940. Colored pencil on paper. 35.6 x 24.5 cm. Courtesy of Throckmorton Fine Art, New York. Hudson, 1997). Of late, Coe has been drawn to the great ceremonial site of Angkor in Cambodia, thinking about the strong similarities between the civilizations of Southeast Asia and those of the Americas. This interest led to Angkor and the Khmer Civilization (Thames and Hudson, 2003). On a cold winter day, Coe came down from New Haven to visit with me in New York. We chatted in my apartment before venturing off for a sumptuous lunch at a French-Vietnamese restaurant. Forrest Colburn: Looking back on your long career, what for you are the highlights? Of all that you have done, what today gives you the most satisfaction? Michael Coe: I am proudest of my teaching at Yale, of the students I was able to attract to the field and whom I helped train. I had a hand in producing some of the finest scholars today who work on the Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, and Aztec civilizations. We had many memorable seminars together. I feel like a parent to them: protective and proud. And many of my students now have trained scholars themselves, so I feel like a grandfather as well. In my own work as a scholar, I am proudest of my work on the Olmec. The two scholars who I have always most admired are Miguel Covarrubias and Matthew Stirling. Covarrubias, unfortunately, I never met; Stirling I did know. Like both of them, I am—and always have been—interested in “beginnings.” I have studied Aztec cosmology and poetry, and I am fascinated with the Aztecs, but I really am drawn to the other end of the time horizon. What are the origins of civilizations? In Mesoamerica, the Olmec are the beginning. They are, as Covarrubias said, the “mother culture.” Stirling said he was “hooked” on the Olmec after seeing a small jade artifact on exhibit in a German museum. I suppose he wondered, “Who made such a beautiful object?” After working on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, I was intrigued by the thought of working on the marshy areas of southeast Mexico, where the colossal Olmec heads had been found. Archaeological FIG. 1: Michael D. Coe, New York, 2012. Photo: Hendrik Smildiger.
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