George Clapp Vaillant
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George Clapp Vaillant (April 5, 1901, Boston, Massachusetts – May 13, 1945, Devon, Pennsylvania) was an American anthropologist.
Vaillant attended Noble and Greenough School in his hometown. After finishing his secondary education at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, he went to Harvard University where he received his Bachelor's Degree in 1922 and Ph.D. in 1927. His Ph.D. thesis established a chronology of Mayan ceramics. Later on, his work launched the historical sequence of cultures in pre-Columbian Mexico.
During his college years, he worked at the Harvard Peabody Museum, and continued on excavating in Pecos, New Mexico. At the American Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., Vaillant was appointed the position of associate curator from 1930 to 1941. He became the honorary curator of Mexican Archaeology from 1941 to 1945; during this time, he also taught at several local universities. He was the Senior Cultural Relations Officer for the United States Embassy in Lima, Peru from 1943 to 1944.
Vaillant conducted archaeological expeditions in the Southwest from 1921 to 1922 and 1922 to 1925, in Egypt from 1923 to 1924, and in Central America in 1926 and 1928 to 1936. He also organized archaeological programs throughout Latin America. Three major excavation sites in the Basin of Mexico, Zacatenco, Ticome, and El Arbolillo, are located.
Aztecs of Mexico: Origins, Rise and Fall of the Aztec Nation was completed in 1944. His other book, Indian Arts in North America, was written in 1939. Vaillant also wrote several monographs on Middle American excavations.
Vaillant was known for the reconstruction of the early stages of Mexican Culture. He was also known for his synthesis of Aztec history, which is also written in Aztecs in Mexico. Throughout his research of relating archaeology to the events and descriptions of colonial sources and Mexican traditions, Vaillant concentrated on problems of chronology and culture history.
[edit] External link
- Mexican and Central American Archaeological Projects - Electronic articles published by the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History.
