Suzanna ('Sue') Whitelaw Miles (June 7, 1922 in

Mount Carroll, Illinois Mount Carroll is a city in Carroll County, Illinois, United States. It is the Carroll County seat. The population was 1479 at the 2020 census. Due to its elevation and northwesterly location, Mount Carroll is subject to unusually cold winter wea ...

– April 10, 1966 in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

) was an American

ethnohistorian Ethnohistory is the study of cultures and indigenous peoples customs by examining historical records as well as other sources of information on their lives and history. It is also the study of the history of various ethnic groups that may or may n ...

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

and

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

. Miles was known for her work among the

Maya peoples The Maya peoples () are an ethnolinguistic group of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. The ancient Maya civilization was formed by members of this group, and today's Maya are generally descended from people ...

of the North-western

Guatemalan highlands The Guatemalan Highlands is an upland region in southern Guatemala, lying between the Sierra Madre de Chiapas to the south and the Petén lowlands to the north. Description The highlands are made up of a series of high valleys enclosed by moun ...

, her analyses of early-colonial sources on Pre-Hispanic Maya culture and society (particularly her study of 16th-century Poqom social structure), and her pioneering studies of

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...

Maya civilization The Maya civilization () of the Mesoamerican people is known by its ancient temples and glyphs. Its Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. It is also noted for its art, archit ...

urban environments and settlement patterns.

Early life and education

Miles' education began in her hometown of Mount Carroll, where during a prolonged childhood illness, her grandfather encouraged her to exercise her intellect. She began her undergraduate studies at

Shimer College Shimer Great Books School (pronounced ) is a Classic_book#University_programs, Great Books college that is part of North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Prior to 2017, Shimer was an independent, accredited college on the south side of ...

(1941-1942), which was then a women's junior college and located in Mount Carroll. She finished her degree at nearby

Beloit College Beloit College is a private liberal arts college in Beloit, Wisconsin. Founded in 1846, when Wisconsin was still a territory, it is the state's oldest continuously operated college. It is a member of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and has ...

(1942-1943), and continued to the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, where she completed her MA in 1948. From 1945 to 1947, she was the Curator of Archeology and Ethnology for the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. After teaching for a time at the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

, she completed her Ph.D. in anthropology at

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

in 1955. Her groundbreaking doctoral dissertation, ''The Sixteenth-Century Pokom-Maya: A Documentary Analysis of Social Structure and Archaeological Setting'', was published in book form by the American Philosophical Society in 1957.

Further career

Miles also undertook work for the

Bollingen Foundation The Bollingen Foundation was an educational foundation set up along the lines of a university press in 1945. It was named after Bollingen Tower, Carl Jung's country home in Bollingen, Switzerland. Funding was provided by Paul Mellon and his wife ...

, particularly the translation of Las Casas's 'Historia de las Indias', a project that stranded because of the loss of her manuscripts.McGuire 1989: 170 Her obituarist,

Tatiana Proskouriakoff Tat'yana Avenirovna Proskuriakova (russian: Татья́на Авени́ровна Проскуряко́ва) ( – August 30, 1985) was a Russian-American Mayanist scholar and archaeologist who contributed significantly to the deciphering of M ...

, wrote concerning these and other unfinished projects, that "It is unlikely that anyone else can continue the projects she had begun, for she relied strongly on a phenomenal memory, composing an entire thesis in her mind before putting anything down on paper, and her notes probably do not reflect the knowledge that she had acquired. This will be a serious loss to all Maya scholars." Proskouriakoff 1968: 754 Most of Miles' career was spent in

Guatemala Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by H ...

, where she became the first woman to reach the highest professorial rank of '' catedrática'' in anthropology, while at the Universidad de San Carlos in her final years.Proskouriakoff 1968: 753 Having returned from Guatemala because of a developing illness, she went to Boston for treatment, where she died a year later at the age of 43. She lies buried at Oak Hill Cemetery, Mt. Carroll, Illinois.

Bibliography

*1952 ''An analysis of modern Middle American calendars: a study in conservation''. In Proceedings and selected papers of the XXIXth International Congress of Americanists 2: 273-284. *1957 ''The sixteenth-century Pokom Maya: a documentary analysis of social structure and archaeological setting''. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (ns.) 47: 733-781. *1960 ''Mam residence and the maize myth''. In Culture in history: essays in honor of Paul Radin. Stanley Diamond, ed. New York, Columbia University Press, pp. 430–436. *1963 ''Informe sobre Kaminal Juyu''. Antropologia e Historia de Guatemala 15:37-38. *1965 ''Sculpture of the Guatemala-Chiapas highlands and Pacific slopes, and associated hieroglyphs''. In Handbook of Middle American Indians. Vol. 2. Robert Wauchope and Gordon R. Willey, eds. pp. 237–275. *1965 ''Summary of preconquest ethnology of the Guatemala-Chiapas highlands and Pacific slopes''. In Handbook of Middle American Indians. Vol. 2. Robert Wauchope and Gordon R. Willey, eds. pp. 276–287.

Notes

References

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External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Miles, Suzanna Whitelaw 1922 births 1966 deaths American Mesoamericanists Women Mesoamericanists Mayanists People from Mount Carroll, Illinois 20th-century Mesoamericanists Mesoamerican archaeologists Academic staff of Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala Shimer College alumni University of Chicago alumni Beloit College alumni Radcliffe College alumni American women archaeologists American women historians American women anthropologists Historians from Illinois 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American archaeologists 20th-century American anthropologists American expatriates in Guatemala American women curators American curators