Alfred Tozzer

Alfred Marston Tozzer (1877-1954) was an American anthropologist, archaeologist, linguist, and educator. His principal area of interest was Mesoamerican, especially Mayan, studies. He was married to Margaret Castle of Honolulu.

Tozzer was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, and graduated in Anthropology from Harvard University in 1900. After expeditionary studies in Hawaii and Mexico, he first investigated the Maya culture in 1902 as a Traveling Fellow of the Archaeological Institute of America, where he witnessed the dredging of the Cenote of Sacrifice in Chichen Itza. Over the next three years, he worked as the first ethnological student among the remaining Maya/Lacandone in Chiapas and Campeche, which studies formed the basis for his Ph.D. thesis. Tozzer became an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Harvard in 1905.

In 1910, Tozzer led an expedition for the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University into Mexico and Central America. In 1914 he became Director of the International School of American Archaeology in Mexico. Before and after these events he remained faithful and dedicated to teaching at Harvard and held the Hudson Chair of Anthropology for many years.

Tozzer held positions as a member of the Academic Board at Radcliffe College, Director of the Harvard Alumni Association, the National Research Council, President of the American Anthropological Association, Faculty Member and Librarian of the Peabody Museum, and Member of the important Administrative Board of Harvard.

Among his popular works was Landa, a translation of the 'pagan' life of the Maya first written by Landa, the misanthropic Bishop of Yucatan in the mid-1500s. His A Maya Grammar remains a classic in linguistic anthropology and resides in the bookshelves of Anthropology graduate students even today.

In addition to his pursuits of study outside our time and country, Tozzer was also an advocate for progressive thought and action, reflected in his series of Lowell Lectures in the 1920s, published as Social Origins and Social Continuities. In this realm, he was a pioneer in the treatment of such still-debated topics as Racial Bias in Standardized Intelligence Evaluations.

In recognition of Tozzer's accomplishments as an educator and as long-time librarian for Harvard's Peabody Museum Library, in 1974 the library was renamed the Tozzer Library. The Tozzer is the oldest library in the United States devoted to collecting ethnology, archaeology, and related anthropological fields. It was founded in 1866 at the bequest of George Peabody.

Tozzer, who served the library from 1935 to 1947, is credited with being largely responsible for building the library's Middle American archaeology and ethnology collection. The library has continued to grow and today it holds one of the largest and most comprehensive anthropology collections in the world.