Samuel Watson Smith (August 21, 1897,

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

– July 29, 1993,

Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

) was an American archaeologist and researcher on the indigenous cultures and artifacts of the western

Anasazi The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, a ...

area.

Biography

Watson Smith matriculated in 1915 at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

and graduated there in 1919 with a bachelor's degree after a brief interruption for military service in WW I. After working for some time, he entered

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

and graduated there in 1924. He then worked for a law firm in

Providence, Rhode Island Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts Bay ...

until 1930, when his parents died. From 1930 to 1933 he worked on settling his parents' estates and by inheritance became independently wealthy. In the summer of 1933 he did archaeological field work at Colorado's

Lowry Pueblo The Lowry Pueblo is an Ancestral Puebloan archaeological site located in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument near Pleasant View, Colorado, United States. The pueblo was constructed around 1060 AD atop abandoned pithouses from an earlier ...

with

Paul Sidney Martin Paul Sidney Martin (born November 22, 1898Nash 2010, p. 105. Nash 2003, p. 165 and the site of the Field Museum of Natural History provide a different date: "Martin was born in Chicago on November 20, 1899" ('. Field Museum of Natural History, C ...

of the

Field Museum of Natural History The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational ...

. After studying law, anthropology, and history during the winter of 1934–1935 under the direction of

Max Radin Max Radin (March 29, 1880 – June 22, 1950 ) was an American legal scholar, philologist, and author. The noted anthropological scholar Paul Radin was his younger brother. Life and work Max Radin, son of the rabbi Adolph Moses Radin, was bor ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, Smith became committed to a career in archaeology. In the spring of 1935 he joined Ansel Hall's Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition in the

Kayenta Kayenta ( nv, ) is a U.S. town which is part of the Navajo Nation and is in Navajo County, Arizona, United States. Established November 13, 1986, the Kayenta Township is the only "township" existing under the laws of the Navajo Nation, making it u ...

area and also spent the early summers of 1936 and 1937 as a member of the Expedition. During this time, Smith met George Walter Brainerd, Edward Twitchell Hall, and John Beach Rinaldo. In the autumn of 1935, Lyndon Lane Hargrave invited Smith to work at the Museum of Northern Arizona with him and Harold Sellers Colton in the preparation of the ''Handbook of Northern Arizona Pottery Types'', which was published in 1937. In the summer of 1936, Smith joined the Awatovi Expedition, led by John Otis Brew. Smith's arrival happened to coincide with the discovery of a kiva with extensive painted murals. He was assigned the task of exposing these "remarkable artistic and religious records." This work eventually led to his becoming a leading expert on "ceramic classification, murals, Pueblo ethnology and Zuni law." In 1949 and 1951 he directed the Peabody Museum's excavations in New Mexico's Quemado area, which is on the boundary of two cultures:

and Mogollon. In 1951 he, with

John Milton Roberts John M. Roberts (December 8, 1916 – April 2, 1990) was an American anthropologist who developed the field of ''expressive culture'' in a series of studies on games in culture, and published over 50 articles on these subjects. His complete list ...

, began a study of Zuni law. Zuni elders and an interpreter enabled Smith and Roberts to compile a unique corpus of Zuni law, which they published in 1954. During his long career, he published many scholarly articles, essays, reviews, and forewords. In 1992 he published a 93-page article on his archaeological career.

Selected publications

* ** * * with John Milton Roberts: * with Richard B. Woodbury and Nathalie F. S. Woodbury: * * *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Watson 1897 births 1993 deaths 20th-century American archaeologists Brown University alumni Harvard Law School alumni