KIDDER, ALFRED V(INCENT)

born Oct. 29, 1885, Marquette, Mich., U.S. died June 11, 1963, Cambridge, Mass. foremost American archaeologist of the southwestern United States and Middle America of his day and the force behind the first comprehensive, systematic approach to North American archaeology. In 1907 Kidder began his career of fieldwork with studies in Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University (1914) for developing the first effective pottery typology relating to the prehistory of the southwestern United States. During expeditions to Utah and Arizona (1914) and as director (191529) of excavations for Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., at the large pueblo at Pecos, N.M., he did much to further the study of anthropology and archaeology in southwestern universities and to establish scientific societies and museums. With Samuel J. Guernsey he wrote two books on northeastern Arizona (1919 and 1921). His Introduction to the Study of Southwestern Archaeology (1924), which became a standard work, details the growth of the prehistoric Basket Maker culture into the Pueblo cultures of historical times. In 1927 he proposed the Pecos archaeological classification system, widely used by later workers in the Pueblo region. Kidder remained with Phillips Academy until 1935. He was also a member of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C. (192750), and of the faculty of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University (193950). For the Carnegie Institution he organized an interdisciplinary program that resulted in a far-reaching survey of cultural history in the Old and New Maya empires of Mexico and Central America, and he frequently worked on sites under investigation, notably at Kaminaljuy, near Guatemala City.