Alfred Kidder

Alfred Vincent Kidder (born October 29, 1885 in Marquette, Michigan , † June 11, 1963 in Cambridge, Massachusetts ) was an American archaeologist and anthropologist . He was among the leading scholars behind the exploration of the American Southwest in the early 20th century. He wrote the first comprehensive reports on the prehistoric history of North America and gave the archeology of North America a system that is still largely valid today.

Life

Native American artifacts in the State Museum of Pennsylvania

Kidder was born the son of a miner. He traveled to Europe in his youth before settling in Boston. From an early age he read a lot about the history of the North American Indians and about archeology . In 1904 he enrolled at Harvard University in order Medicine study. The medical internships didn't appeal to him at all. In 1907 he applied for a summer job for the University of Utah and then traveled several summers through the southwestern United States. In 1908 he graduated from Harvard - in archeology, notably. In 1910 he married his wife Madeleine, with whom he had five children.

In 1914 Kidder was awarded a doctorate for his work "Cliff Dwellers and Basket Maker". Kidder then returned to the southwest, often following in the footsteps of Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier , another man who was central to American archeology.

Between 1915 and 1929, Kidder was instrumental in several excavations in the southwest, including the Pecos Pueblo near Santa Fé, New Mexico . In the pueblos of the southwest, digging according to the rules of stratigraphy , the oldest systematic excavation method, was particularly simple and revealing. The doctrine of stratigraphy says that the oldest remains are in an excavation mound at the bottom and the newest at the top. In the pueblos, the rubbish was simply stacked in the rooms on the floor and then covered again with sand and stacked again. If the room was full, you probably just built a new one above or next to it. Even the dead were buried in rooms, sometimes very carelessly.

From the pueblos, Kidder recovered a very large number of artefacts, in particular pottery shards, wickerwork and human bones. Using the potsherds and wickerwork, Kidder created the first chronology of the cultures of the Southwest. The pottery shards could be assigned quite clearly to different epochs on the basis of decorations and other properties, and their relative age could also be determined based on their position in the layers . The absolute dating, i.e. the precise indication of when a certain ceramic style was “fashion”, could only be determined later, first through dendrochronology , and later through the C-14 method . Kidder presented this chronology of the early cultural periods of North America at the first Pecos conference he had called in 1927 (which was to take place regularly thereafter):

Pecos classification according to Kidder
Basket Maker I.
Basket Maker II
Basket Maker III
Pueblo I
Pueblo II
Pueblo III
Pueblo IV
Pueblo V

The basket makers got their name because all of their implements were wickerwork, especially the baskets. At the end of the Basket Maker III period, pottery was developed and the construction of the large pueblos began, before that they lived in earth-pit houses. The scheme is still used today, with minor modifications.

In 1924, Kidder presented his introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archeology , which has become a standard work . In it he describes in detail the origin and development of the Anasazi culture . In 1927 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1934 to the American Philosophical Society and in 1936 to the National Academy of Sciences .

Later, Kidder also studied the basics of archeology in Mexico and Central America . In 1952 he was involved in the founding of the New World Archaeological Foundation , because the progress of research, despite significant discoveries in the thirties and forties of the 20th century, was overall quite modest, especially because, in the opinion of the founders, too few people were concerned with the matter.

Aftermath

In addition to his works, which are regarded as standard works of American archeology, the memory of Kidder is kept alive by the Pecos conferences that are still taking place . The Kidder Award for Achievement in American Archeology is presented every three years. To this end, 100 bronze medals were deposited in the Peabody Museum. The award will therefore be able to be awarded for three hundred years.

Later work-up

Jemez-Pueblo, around 1850

Kidder dug, especially in the years 1915 to 1929 in the Pecos-Pueblo, regardless of the potential claims of the local population, although he knew that there were connections to Indian tribes still alive. At the time of his excavation, the land was still private property, but this was later changed by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. The law requires that human remains and cultural treasures must be returned to the Indians by state-funded institutions. Peco is therefore now administered by the Jemez . In 1999, the human remains from Kidder's excavations were returned to the Jemez and reburied there in the Pecos National Historic Park . Not far from there, near the Pecos-Pueblo, Kidder himself is buried.

Works

Kidder's works include Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archeology (1924 ), which is considered the first comprehensive work on New World archeology; " The Pottery of Pecos (2 vol., 1931-36 )"; " The Artifacts of Pecos (1932 )" and " Pecos, New Mexico: Archaeological Notes (1958) ".

• Kidder, Alfred V. “Prehistoric cultures of the San Juan drainage - 1914.” Reproduced in Alfred V. Kidder, by Richard B. Woodbury, Columbia University Press, New York, 1973, pp. 99-107.
• Kidder, Alfred V. and Kidder, Mary A. "Notes on the pottery of Pecos - 1917." American Anthropologist 19 (3): 325-360.
• Kidder, Alfred V., Jennings, Jesse D. , Shook, Edwin M. Shook, with technological notes by Anna O. Shepard. "Excavations at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala." Carnegie Institution of Washington. Publication 561. Washington, DC 1946.

swell

• CW Ceram : The First American . the discovery of Native American cultures in North America. Hannelore Marek and Artemis & Winkler Verlag, Munich and Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-7608-1928-1 .
• Flint, Richard, and Shirley Cushing Flint: Alfred V. Kidder . In: New Mexico Digital History Project . New Mexico Office of the State Historian. n. d .. Retrieved January 23, 2016.
• Patterson, Thomas Carl: A Social History of Anthropology in the United States . Berg, Oxford; New York 2001, ISBN 1-85973-489-8 , OCLC 48551832 .
• Woodbury, Richard B .: Alfred V. Kidder . Columbia University Press , New York 1973, ISBN 0-231-03485-7 , OCLC 447403 .

Web links

• Gordon Wiley: Alfred Vincent Kidder - A Biographical Memoir (PDF; 2.5 MB), National Academy of Sciences , 1967
• Alfred Vincent Kidder in the Encyclopædia Britannica

Individual evidence

1. ^ Member History: Alfred V. Kidder. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 23, 2018 .