deciphering the Maya script in the twentieth century, the archaeological venture into the territory of the ancient Maya was clearly understood as part of a larger scheme of cultural appropriation, after the model [...] Stephens dreams of using the monuments from Copán to rival the imperial museums of Europe: “The casts of the Parthenon,” he writes, “are regarded as precious memorials in the British Museum, and casts [...] homelands east of the Mississippi to the Indian Territory in today’s Oklahoma. The mass removal had culminated in the Trail of Tears in 1838 during which thousands of people died. The concurrence of these
https://www.iaa.uni-rostock.de/forschung/laufende-forschungsprojekte/american-antiquities-prof-mackenthun/project/agents/john-lloyd-stephens-1/