Bunzel, Ruth Leah

Bunzel, Ruth Leah (1898–  ) cultural anthropologist; born in New York City. She graduated from Barnard College in 1918 and worked as Franz Boas' secretary before undertaking a study of Zuñi Indian pottery with the encouragement of Boas and Ruth Benedict in 1924. She received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1929, the year she published The Pueblo Potter. She also contributed important studies of Zuñi ceremonialism. Field trips to Guatemala in the 1930s yielded Chichicastenango, A Guatemalan Village (1952). She later taught anthropology at Columbia.