School of American Archaeology

School of American Archaeology
Name	School of American Archaeology
Formation	1907
Type	Research institution
Headquarters	Santa Fe, New Mexico
Leader title	Director
Leader name	Edgar L. Hewett

School of American Archaeology

The School of American Archaeology is an institution founded in the early 20th century in Santa Fe, New Mexico to promote archaeological research, preservation, and publication focused on the prehistory and historic periods of the American Southwest and Mesoamerica. It developed close ties with regional museums, universities, and federal agencies, becoming a nexus for excavations, training, and scholarship that connected local sites with broader debates about cultural chronology and material culture across Ancestral Puebloans, Hohokam, Mogollon, Mississippian culture, and Aztec spheres. Early leadership and staff included figures who worked with or against contemporaries at institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution, the American Anthropological Association, and the American Museum of Natural History.

History

The School of American Archaeology emerged amid Progressive Era initiatives linking preservation activists and scholars such as Edgar L. Hewett, who collaborated with municipal leaders in Santa Fe, New Mexico and with patrons connected to the Carnegie Institution and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Founding activities paralleled fieldwork by contemporaries at Casa Rinconada, Mesa Verde National Park, and excavations led by teams from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Field Museum of Natural History. Throughout the 1910s–1930s the School negotiated relationships with federal programs including the National Park Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, while seeking funding from private foundations and aligning with state historical commissions in New Mexico and Arizona. Conflicts and collaborations with figures from the American Antiquarian Society, the Archaeological Institute of America, and the Peabody Museum shaped debates about artifact curation, repatriation, and excavation ethics that echoed later disputes involving the National Museum of the American Indian and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Mission and Research Focus

The School’s mission prioritized systematic excavation, typological analysis, and public dissemination of findings from sites associated with Ancestral Puebloans, Hohokam, Mogollon, Sinagua, and other Southwestern cultural traditions, while extending comparative studies to Mesoamerica and the Great Plains. Research emphasized ceramic seriation, architectural chronology, paleoethnobotany, and lithic technology, engaging scholars who also published in venues associated with the American Antiquity journal, the Journal of Field Archaeology, and monographs from the University of New Mexico Press. The School fostered interdisciplinary ties with specialists from the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology, botanists linked to the New York Botanical Garden, and geoarchaeologists working with the United States Geological Survey.

Organizational Structure and Affiliations

Administratively, the School operated with a director, an advisory board composed of academics from institutions such as the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, Columbia University, and curators from the American Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum. It maintained affiliations with state historical societies like the New Mexico Historical Society and cooperated with municipal institutions including the Museum of New Mexico and the Santa Fe Institute for cultural programming. Funding partnerships and collaborative fieldwork often involved the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and philanthropic families linked to the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

Major Projects and Fieldwork

The School directed excavations and surveys at emblematic sites across the Southwest and northern Mexico, coordinating campaigns at ruins comparable in significance to Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Pueblo Bonito, Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, and canyon pueblos traditionally studied by teams from the University of Arizona and the University of Colorado Boulder. Field seasons often produced comparative collections used in typologies alongside assemblages from Teotihuacan, Monte Albán, and Tikal discussed by Mesoamericanists at the Carnegie Institution and the Peabody Museum. Collaborative projects included regional surveys in the Rio Grande Valley, salvage archaeology linked with Civilian Conservation Corps projects, and stratigraphic excavations applying methods developed by peers at the British Museum and the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine.

Publications and Academic Contributions

The School issued monographs, site reports, and bulletins that contributed to cultural sequence building and artifact classification used by scholars at the Society for American Archaeology, the American Anthropological Association, and university departments at University of New Mexico and University of California, Los Angeles. Its publishing program paralleled contemporary periodicals such as the American Journal of Archaeology and the Bulletin of the School of American Archaeology served as a venue for stratigraphic reports, radiocarbon calibrations following standards promoted by the International Radiocarbon Conference, and syntheses cited in later works from the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution. The School’s catalogs and photographic archives were referenced by curators at the Peabody Museum and researchers at the Institute of Archaeology (UCLA).

Education, Training, and Public Outreach

Training programs combined field schools for graduate students affiliated with institutions like University of Arizona, Harvard University, and Columbia University with public lectures hosted alongside the Museum of New Mexico and local historical societies. Outreach included exhibitions in partnership with the American Museum of Natural History, traveling displays that circulated to institutions such as the Peabody Museum and the Field Museum, and community consultations with Pueblo and other Indigenous representatives linked to the Pueblo Revolt commemorations and cultural heritage initiatives. The School’s educational legacy influenced generations of archaeologists who later taught at the University of Chicago, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Category:Archaeology organizations