Before and After the Carnegie Era: On the Financial and Logistical Standardization of US Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Carnegie Institution of Washington program in Mayanist archaeology presents a pivotal transition in how U.S. archaeologists financed and organized large-scale projects in Latin America. In many ways, this organization consolidated an earlier transition from direct elite patronage of archaeological collectors to the foundation of stable bureaucracies of finance, logistical management and curation. Besides the unprecedented scale of funding made available for excavation and restoration, CIW policies also set a series of significant precedents regarding collecting activities and relations with the national governments of Mexico and Central America. As this program wound down in the post-War years, Carnegie scholars like Alfred Kidder collaborated extensively with archaeologists at other institutions, consolidating lasting patterns of funding and logistical support for the discipline. Tracing this process from the mid-1920s to the 1950s provides key insights into the larger social networks, economic interests and trans-national politics that are at the heart of the discipline’s history.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51068