Merle Greene Robertson (August 30, 1913 – April 22, 2011[1]) was an American artist, art historian, archaeologist, lecturer and Mayanist researcher, renowned for her extensive work towards the investigation and preservation of the art, iconography, and writing of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Central America.

Robertson was born in 1913 in the small town of Miles City, Montana to Ada Emma Foote and Darrell Irving McCann.

[3] In Great Falls she met the artist Charles M. Russell, who spent many afternoons teaching Mhererle how to paint.

The Robertsons traveled to El Salvador to visit cadets Quiñónez, Escalon, and Sagrera, and learn about Salvadoran archeology.

Robertson earned her Master's of Fine Arts from the University of Guanajuato, where she studied watercolors, oils, photography, and mural painting from one of Mexico's top artists, James Pinto.

She also started her famous rubbings at this time, making the art form a way to document and preserve the information on Maya relief sculptures.

She and her husband Bob both worked at the Stevenson School in Pebble Beach, California; this is where she first began to instill her love of the Maya into young students.

Robertson, along with Mayanist Tatiana Proskouriakoff and Edith Ricketson, paved the way for women to enter the field of Maya archaeology.

[5] This non-profit organization supported the research of Mesoamerican art, epigraphy, and iconography, and funded archaeological excavations at Palenque under the Cross Group Project.