Merle Greene Robertson, who merged her loves of art and history into a groundbreaking career in archaeology, died April 22 at her home in San Francisco. She was 97.

Mrs. Robertson was a leading researcher of ancient Mayan civilization and a passionate teacher who led hundreds of local students on adventures amid the ruins of Central America and Mexico.

"She was small of stature but a vigorous, magnificent presence," said Frank Keith, who was the academic dean of the Stevenson School in Pebble Beach when Mrs. Robertson taught there. "She was a true scholar, but she had such a captivating personality she was able to pass her passion along to her students."

Mrs. Robertson pioneered a type of archaeological rubbing, using rice paper and Japanese ink, that elevated the standard technique for recording images of artifacts to an art form. More than 2,000 of her rubbings are preserved at Tulane University in New Orleans.

In 1993, the Mexican government honored her with the highest award it bestows on foreigners, the Order of the Aztec Eagle, for her years helping preserve Mayan heritage.

"Merle was the first to do large numbers of really superb rubbings in the New World," said E. Wyllys Andrews, former director of the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane. "So many of these ruins have been destroyed that Merle's recordings have been amazingly valuable. Her work was truly phenomenal."

Mrs. Robertson was born in Miles City, Mont., where her father worked as a sawmill architect. From him, and from neighbor Charles Russell, the famed western artist, Mrs. Robertson leaned to draw.

After graduating from the University of Washington, Mrs. Robertson studied art at Instituto Allende in Mexico, where she fell in love with Latin American culture and art and later earned a master's of fine arts degree from University of Guanajuato.

"She loved the color, the feeling, the fact that it wasn't very far away," said her son, David Greene of San Francisco. "And it was different than Egyptology because there was still so much to discover."

For the next four decades, she was a frequent visitor to Mexico and Central America, creating rubbings, drawings and photographs of more than 130 archaeological sites. In 1973, she co-founded the Palenque Round Table, which became a leading conference for Mayan researchers.

Mrs. Robertson would spend weeks painstakingly documenting altars, statues and other ruins that were threatened by decay and looting. She trooped miles through the jungle, scrambled up pyramids and took on gun-toting guerrillas, poisonous snakes and other wildlife, often with a group of students in tow.

For the rubbings, she would clean an artifact, then cover it with wet rice paper. When the paper dried, she meticulously blotted it with ink until she created a perfect impression of the artifact. Rubbings are superior to photographs or drawings because they're 100 percent scale, can be three-dimensional and contain no shadows, Andrews said.

"She was a tremendous talent," he said. "She was able to provide a permanent physical record of thousands of these ruins, many of which have since been destroyed."

In addition to her son, Mrs. Robertson is survived by eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. Her husband and a daughter predeceased her.

Services will be private.

The family suggests donations to the Latin American Library's Merle Greene Robertson Fund, Fourth Floor, Howard-Tilton Library, Tulane University, 7001 Freret St., New Orleans, LA 70118; or the Pre-Columbian Collection at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA 94118.