to act almost as their representative in several matters, although he was equally careful not to upset the Mexican and U.S. governments. His directorship over all of the Institute's activities in the Maya region soon ran into difficulty. Because of cost and schedule overruns as well as criticisms of the quality of some of the research produced, the Carnegie board began to believe that managing multiple projects was not Morley's forte. In 1929, the overall directorship of the programme was passed to A. V. Kidder, and Morley was left to concentrate on Chichen Itza. Apart from the archaeological investigations which were the main purpose of the Carnegie programme's efforts under Morley, the programme also sponsored the undertaking of comparative field research on modern Yucatec Maya communities. This research, conducted in the 1930s and led by the anthropologist Robert Redfield as a Carnegie research associate, collected data and examined the cultural contrasts of indigenous Maya experience at four "levels" of community — a traditional indigenous village, a peasant village, a town, and a city — which were analyzed in social anthropological terms as 'types' representing different degrees of societal isolation and homogeneity. Slightly built and not noted for possessing a strong constitution, Morley saw his health deteriorate over the years spent laboring in the Central American jungles under often adverse conditions. Several times, he was incapacitated by recurring bouts of malaria and he had to be hospitalised after separately contracting colitis and then amoebic dysentery the following year. During the 1930s, it also became evident that he had developed cardiac difficulties, which would plague him for the remainder of his life. Nevertheless, although he "detested" the jungle conditions, he persevered in his work with evident enthusiasm. In between overseeing the projects and conducting his own researches, Morley published several treatises on Maya hieroglyphics and his interpretations on their meaning. These include a survey of inscriptions at Copán (1920) and a larger study (a massive tome of over 2,000 pages in five volumes) encompassing many of the sites he had investigated in the Petén region (1932–38). Excavations at Chichen Itza Context Chichen Itza is about 120 km (75 miles) southeast of Mérida, on the inland plains of north-central Yucatán. It had been known to Europeans since the first recorded visits by the 16th century conquistadores. During the conquest of Yucatán, the Spanish attempted to establish a capital at Chichén Itzá, but resistance