Kidder, Alfred Vincent

Kidder, Alfred Vincent, 1885–1963, American archaeologist, b. Marquette, Mich., grad. Harvard (B.A. 1908; Ph.D. 1914). From 1915 to 1929 he conducted excavations at Pecos, N.Mex., for the Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. This research is considered to have laid the foundation for modern archaeological field methods. In the late 1920s he started the Pecos conferences for archaeologists and ethnologists. As an associate in charge of archaeological investigations (1927–29) and as chairman of the division of historical research (1929–50) at the Carnegie Institution, he conducted a broad-scale research program in the Guatemalan highlands which established the framework of Mayan stratigraphy. In 1939 he became honorary curator of Southwestern American archaeology at the Peabody Museum, Harvard. His writings include Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archaeology (1924), regarded as the first comprehensive archaeological study of a New World area; The Pottery of Pecos (2 vol., 1931–36); The Artifacts of Pecos (1932); and Pecos, New Mexico: Archaeological Notes (1958).

Bibliography

See biography by R. B. Woodbury (1973).