Over one hundred years ago, Raymond Merwin traveled to Holmul, Guatemala to do a scientific study of the Mayan ruins there. Even though many important finds were made the report of the study was not published until 1932. Much of this website is based on information from his personal journals and a new look at the fields notes from his work.

MerwinatHolmul.com was created by Keith Merwin to help document the story of Dr. Raymond E. Merwin, in 2024 he had to move the site to MerwinatHolmul.net. My interest in Raymond and his work dates from the 1970s when I heard stories about him from his younger brother, Bruce. Bruce had spent his professional life as an Educator but had a lifelong love for archaeology. He had worked for the Peabody Museum at Harvard on several sites and with Raymond at Holmul. When I tried to find information on Raymond or Holmul I really could not find anything other than references to the 1932 Peabody Museum report The Ruins of Holmul, Guatemala. When Bruce passed away he left two personal journals Raymond had written while in the field. Many years later while searching the internet for information on Holmul I learned of Francisco Estrada-Belli and his work at Holmul. As we corresponded I learned that Raymond's work at Holmul was important to early Mayan studies.

In February 2009 I traveled to the archive at the Peabody to expand my research. The staff was very helpful and the information fascinating. As I have reached out to people for information, I have found many people to be surprised that the journals exist and interested in the picture they contain of what archaeology was like in 1909. During the summer of 2009 my family and I were able to travel to Belize and Guatemala visiting many of the sites Raymond and Dr Tozzer visited in 1909. At the kind invitation of Francisco Estrada-Belli we were able to visit the Holmul Project and see the site of Holmul and Cival.