John Howland Rowe

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John Howland Rowe (born June 10, 1918 in Sorrento , Maine , † May 1, 2004 in Berkeley, California ) was an eminent American anthropologist and archaeologist .

He is the son of Louis Earle Rowe and his wife Margaret Talbot Jackson . His first marriage to Barbara Burnett had two daughters, Ann Pollard Rowe and Lucy Burnett Rowe, and his second marriage was to Patricia Lyon.

Career

Childhood and youth

At the age of three, John H. Rowe wanted to become an archaeologist. His father was the director of the well-known Rhode Island School of Design in Providence (capital of the US state Rhode Island ) and had always wanted to be an archaeologist himself; he was once granted a stay in Egypt with the Egyptologist George Andrew Reisner , who occasionally visited the Rowe family.

From the beginning, the boy proved to be very independent and even reluctant to face authorities. As a ten-year-old he made serious explorations of Roman ruins on his own when his family stayed in Rome for a year.

Studies and first teaching position

In 1935 John Rowe enrolled at the renowned Brown University to study classical archeology , where he studied until 1939; He added to this from 1939 to 1941 an anthropology degree at Harvard University . Immediately thereafter, he directed archaeological research in Peru from 1941 to 1943, combined with a first teaching position in the Peruvian Cuzco , the former Inca capital. There he offered u. a. a course in linguistics ; for beyond archeology and anthropology he had also studied texts because linguistics had also been very important to him. (The acquisition of competencies in this area already benefited him a few years later, because they probably formed the decisive basis for being able to take on the newly created position of the University of California, Berkeley for archeology and linguistics: He was the only one able , to teach both and was called to this post.) Rowe financed this first stay in Peru with prizes he had received for successfully passing exams in Latin and Greek.

Interruption of scientific activity

Another two more years, 1944-1946, he then spent due to the Second World War in Europe in military service, where he was employed as a sergeant of the US Combat Engineers. However, he also used this time for linguistics: For example, he analyzed the Armenian spoken by one of his comrades, who belonged to the second generation of foreigners.

Research assignment in Colombia and completion of the doctorate

In the following three years until 1948 he worked for the American Smithsonian Institution in Colombia on the ethnography of the people of the Guambía (also called Misak ). Nonetheless, he had occasionally returned to Harvard in 1946 to complete his doctoral thesis on Latin American history and in 1947 on anthropology.

Professor at Berkeley

In 1948, Rowe then began teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, which he held until his retirement in 1988. However, he continued further research until his Parkinson's disease worsened a few years before his death.

meaning

Rowes set up anthropological institutes and libraries

The special merits of John H. Rowe are u. a. when setting up three anthropological institutes or corresponding libraries:

  • in Cuzco (Peru);
  • in Popayán (Colombia), plus the anthropological library;
  • Library of the Institute of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, now the George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library ; this now comprises over 70,000 volumes.

Scientific work

He wrote his extensive literature from six decades not only in English, but also largely in Spanish. He published his first work as early as 1940, as a 22-year-old student: On the basis of independent excavations of the Waterside shell heap in Maine, he contributed to clarifying the stratigraphy of the area. Nevertheless, this was not his only commitment in this regard, because as a co-founder of a student association for excavations, he was also active in Massachusetts and Florida .

Among his more than 300 scientific publications, not only his work from 1946 on the culture of the Inca during the time of the Spanish conquest stands out ("Inca culture at the time of the Spanish conquest. In Handbook of South American Indians, Vol. 2, pp. 183-330, pls. 77-84 "). His contribution to this 5000-page manual is arguably unmatched. And the 45-page work on the Incas under Spanish rule, submitted in 1957, also set an almost international standard ("The Incas under Spanish colonial institutions. Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. XXXVII, no. 2, May, pp. 155– 199 ").

Considerable linguistic contributions

His language skills presented Rowe significantly also in 1950 demonstrated when he submitted one of his first linguistic work which sound patterns in Inca has -Dialekten on the theme: "Sound patterns in three Inca dialects. International Journal of American Linguistics, vol. 16, no. 3, July, pp. 137-148 ". In addition, John Rowe is also regarded as a proven expert on Quechua , the language of the Incas that is still spoken in various forms in the South American Andes .

honors and awards

Memberships

See also

Machu Picchu

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Rowe, John Howland
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American anthropologist and American scholar
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Sorrento , Maine
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 2004
Place of death Berkeley, California