>(Does Coe give any indication at all of the importance of
> Whorf's work? I don't recall.)

Coe did acknowledge Whorf, but didn't attach any importance to his
findings, just said that he had contributed. He said that Whorf's
decipherment of the "mac" sign [ma + c(a)] was a foreshadowing of the
breakthrough Knorosov would make with his Principle of Synharmony,
and mentioned a few other glyphs he had deciphered, but that was all.
Mostly Coe stressed that he had erred horribly in his attempt at
decipherment by trying to break the signs down into smaller pieces
and that this unfortunetly left him open to attack by Thompson and
his cronies. (p.137)

I've looked back to see what Coe says about Lounsbury. In his
postscript for the 1999 revised edition, Coe says that it was
Lounsbury "who gave us the methodology of the decipherment - the
tie-in with the spoken language, the technique of cross-readings, and
the ground rules for establishing proof that a proposed reading was
valid" (p. 276). In the main part of the book he says that Lounsbury
set the methodological standard with his logical analysis of the
"Ben-Ich" affix (described on pp. 199-200). Unfortunately, I didn't
fully understand Coe's explanation of this particular decipherment.

I agree that Lounsbury definiteley took a back burner to Knorosov in
the book. However, IMHO it was Coe's focus on Linda Schele and David
Stuart that obscured him the most. Perhaps because they were the most
active or colorful of the group?

Thanks for the recommended readings.

Cathy