Danien, Elin C.

The Robert Burkitt Papers were collected by Elin Danien on a trip to Guatemala in 1985. Danien, the Coordinator of Public Programs at the Penn Museum, was also a student in the Ph.D.program in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania at the time of her trip. She hoped to determine if the writings and notebooks of Robert Burkitt, reportedly destroyed at his death, were indeed lost to history.

Robert Burkitt. a Harvard graduate and friend of George Byron Gordon, accompanied Gordon as his assistant on the Fourth Copan Expedition to Guatemala in 1894. Burkitt remained in Guatemala for the rest of his life while Gordon returned to the United States and in 1910 became the Director of the Free Museum of Science and Art (later the Penn Museum). Burkitt developed a unique style in studying the native Indian languages and received some recognition before accepting an informal agreement with his old friend, Gordon, to locate and ship artifacts from Guatemala to the Free Museum of Science and Art.

By contacting the relatives of Kensitt Champsey, with whom Burkitt resided during his time in Guatemala, Danien discovered that there were some trunks of Burkitt's work that still remained on the Champsey family property. Danien also tracked down a man who had worked on the Burkitt digs in Guatemala and the widow of Burkitt's college roommate, living in Massachusetts, among others who recalled Robert Burkitt.

Elin C. Danien was born in 1929 in New York. She worked briefly as an actress in New York and in Mexican films and at a major advertising agency before marrying and moving to Philadelphia. Danien came to the Penn Museum as a volunteer and then moved into the Education Department as a part-time guide-liaison. She entered college at age 46, attending part-time in the College of General Studies. While she pursued her degree, Danien was named Coordinator of Public Programs and then Coordinator of Events for the Museum. She attained her B.A. in Anthropology in 1982.

Danien continued her education at the University os Pennsylvania completing her dissertation on Chama Polychromes and her Ph.D. in 1998.

Danien established the Bread Upon the Waters Scholarship Fund at Penn for women over age 30 who wanted to attain a degree by part-time study in the College of General Studies. Her initial endowment has grown along with the number of students who have benefited from her generosity and vision. At the Penn Museum, she created the annual Maya Weekend where upward of 500 professional and amateur anthropologists attend lectures and workshops on Maya archaeology and epigraphy.

Her publications include "Excavating Among the Collections: A Re-examination of Three Maya Figurines" in New Theories of the Ancient Maya, which she co-edited with Robert J. Sharer. Danien also edited, with John M. Weeks, The Lost Notebooks of Robert Burkitt Maya Linguist; A Record of Languages of Ancient Guatemala.

Elin Danien is the recipient of the General William Tecumseh Sherman Prize for Civic Improvement given by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

From the guide to the Elin Danien collection of Robert Burkitt papers, 1903-1913, (University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives)