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Betty Jane Meggers (December 5, 1921 - July 2, 2012) Monica Barnes American Museum of Natural History, Monica@Andeanpast.Org Andean Past Volume 11 Article 4 12-15-2013 Betty Jane Meggers (December 5, 1921 - July 2, 2012) Monica Barnes American Museum of Natural History, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/andean_past Part of the Archaeological Anthropology Commons, and the Ceramic Arts Commons Recommended Citation Barnes, Monica (2013) "Betty Jane Meggers (December 5, 1921 - July 2, 2012)," Andean Past: Vol. 11 , Article 4. Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/andean_past/vol11/iss1/4 This Obituaries is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Andean Past by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BETTY JANE MEGGERS (DECEMBER 5, 1921-JULY 2, 2012) MONICA BARNES American Museum of Natural History and Andean Past Betty Jane Meggers (center) with Alberto Rex González (viewer’s left) and Lautaro Núñez (right), at the Simposio Internacional de Arqueología Sudamericana, Cuenca, Ecuador, 1992. Photo by Marta I. Baldini. In some important ways, the life of Betty ten records, such as Egypt or Sumer. By the Jane Meggers spans an epoch in archaeology. time of Meggers’ death, scientific dating meth- When she was a student in the 1940s, absolute ods had been considerably refined, but some had dating techniques were in their infancy. These proven unreliable. Meggers and her husband revolutionized our knowledge of the past. Previ- and colleague, Clifford Evans, Jr., were early ously, firm dates could only be established for advocates of radiocarbon, thermoluminescence, those ancient cultures that had produced writ- and obsidian hydration dating. They also placed ANDEAN PAST 11 (2013): 1-6. ANDEAN PAST 11 (2013) - 2 considerable stress on a technique first applied 1943, her M.A. from the University of Michigan in Europe and Western Asia in the nineteenth in 1944, and her Ph.D. from Columbia Univer- century–type-variety seriation. Using a combi- sity in 1952. Evans was one of her fellow gradu- nation of stratified excavation, seriation, and ate students at the latter institution. The couple geophysical dating techniques, they established met, and carried on a romance, behind the the first cultural sequences for large portions of scenes, in the American Museum of Natural South America, lasting achievements that have History, where both were studying the pottery stimulated much subsequent research. collections. They married in 1946. Through her choices of universities, Meggers was exposed to Meggers’ life also spans an epoch in that she a variety of teachers and approaches (see Car- launched her career with two paradigms–that neiro’s essay below). the Amazonian drainage cannot support sus- tained agriculture and large populations, and Meggers’ influence far outweighed what one that the initial stimulus for early ceramics and would expect from her formal positions as a other cultural traits along the eastern Pacific Volunteer (during her teenage years), Research coast had come from Japan and/or China. The Associate (1954 until her death), and Expert first of these paradigms received broad accep- (1981 until her death) in the Anthropology tance when she proposed it and seemed to Department of the Smithsonian Institution’s support the cause of ecological activists who National Museum of Natural History. Although wished to preserve what they believed to be Meggers was equally well qualified and shared in primeval forests. However, by the time of almost all of his research, it was Evans, who died Meggers’ death, both of these explanatory in 1981, who held the post of Curator of Latin frameworks had been widely, but not entirely, American Archaeology at the Museum. At the rejected on the basis of emerging evidence. time this was a common arrangement. The male Nevertheless, Meggers defended them to the member of a couple had the official position, last. This section of Andean Past 11 celebrates while the female was nominally some kind of and evaluates her considerable achievements, adjunct. Nevertheless, Meggers was at least as while not avoiding the shortcomings of her much of a force as Evans and their marriage was theories. strong. Meggers made no secret of her devasta- tion when Evans died suddenly and unexpect- Especially in the early part of her career, edly. Meggers was a prodigious field-worker. In 1963, with Evans and ethnographer Saul H. Riesen- In the 1940s, when Meggers entered her berg, she made an examination of Megalithic profession, archaeologists were still trying to structures in the Caroline Islands of Micronesia. discern the basic culture histories and temporal She and Evans also conducted archaeological sequences of the peoples who occupied what survey on Dominica in the Lesser Antilles in later became the Latin American republics. This 1966. However, the heart of her research was work had been launched earlier in the twentieth lowland South America. She dominated Amazo- century by pioneers such as Max Uhle, Julio C. nian and Ecuadorian archaeology for many Tello, and Wendell Bennett. In 1936 Tello, years. Bennett, Samuel K. Lothrop, Clarence Leonard Hay, Leslie Spier, and George C. Vaillant found- Meggers had a solid formal education in ed the Institute of Andean Research to serve as anthropology and archaeology. She received her an umbrella organization for coordinating ar- A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania in chaeological research in Latin America and to 3 - Barnes: Betty J. Meggers administer funds. One of the major goals of the Marshall Saville (Saville 1910), Max Uhle (Uhle IAR was to build archaeological sequences, and 1927), Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño (Jijón y to co-ordinate them across cultures and geo- Caamaño 1951), Edwin Ferdon (Lubensky graphical distances. With these goals in mind, 2007), and Donald Collier and John Murra field projects were established in Peru, Mexico, (Collier and Murra 1943) had all conducted El Salvador, Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecua- survey and excavations in that country earlier, dor, and Chile. One of the most influential of but none of their publications created a big these was the Virú Valley Project (1946) that picture. Meggers’ Ecuadorian sequence is most introduced the concept of settlement pattern accessibly presented in her book, Ecuador studies to Latin American archaeology (Daggett (Meggers 1966). 2009). Through William Duncan Strong, one of their teachers at Columbia University, Meggers It was Emilio Estrada who formulated the and Evans became conversant with the methods hypothesis that the art of pottery making was and goals of the IAR (Strong and Evans 1952). brought to Ecuador, and hence to the rest of She and Evans published the first cultural South America, by mariners of Japan’s Jomon sequence for the mouth of the Amazon (Evans culture who had drifted along the Pacific Rim and Meggers 1950; Meggers and Evans 1957). between 3000 and 2000 B.C. (Estrada et al. Meggers and Evans’ next field-work was in what 1962). Nevertheless, Meggers did not oppose was then British Guiana (now Guyana) and in the idea and allowed her name to be associated parts of Venezuela, from 1952 to 1953. There with it. However, Jomon is a sort of catch-all they also worked out a cultural sequence (Good- phrase, used by some to refer to cultures span- win et al. 1982:636) and applied the concept of ning approximately 14,000 years. This temporal settlement pattern. depth makes tight Old and New World compar- isons almost impossible. Meggers also believed After British Guiana/Guyana Meggers and that Olmec civilization in Mexico was sparked Evans turned their attention to Ecuador. Be- by contacts with China. Meggers defended the tween 1954 and 1961 they conducted archaeo- idea of significant transpacific contacts with her logical survey and excavations on Ecuador’s usual tenacity, even late in her career (Meggers coast and in the Río Napa Valley in close collab- 1998). oration with self-taught Ecuadorian archaeolo- gist Emilio Estrada Icaza. Estrada’s death in After Estrada’s death Meggers and Evans 1961, at the age of 45, ended this cooperation. returned to field-work in the Amazonian low- lands. Anthropologist Robert L. Carneiro in Meggers, Evans, and Estrada excavated at “Reminiscences of a Stalwart Adversary” and the Hacienda Chorrera in Los Ríos Province geographer William I. Woods in “Betty Meggers: and at the Valdivia site in Guayas Province, Her Later Years” (both in this issue of Andean among other places. The stratified ceramics they Past) assess Meggers’ influence on Amazonian found allowed them to devise a chronology for archaeology. In the space remaining to me, I much of Ecuadorian prehistory (Evans and would like to comment upon Meggers’ enthusi- Meggers 1955, 1965; Meggers et al. 1965). The astic adoption of environmental archaeology Formative Valdivia culture, in particular, re- and scientific dating methods, and upon her role ceived a lot of attention, in part because it had of mentor to Latin American archaeologists. produced the earliest pottery known from the Americas. However, Meggers and Evans were Beginning in the 1930s, environmental and not the first archaeologists to work in Ecuador. landscape archaeology were developing rapidly, ANDEAN PAST 11 (2013) - 4 especially in Europe1 and in parts of the United a seminar on quantitative pottery analysis at States (Cole and Deuel 1937). Meggers em- Barranquilla, Colombia in association with the braced that trend. In all of her work in Ama- Universidad del Atlántico’s Museo Etnológico. zonia and in Ecuador she never saw cultures as Eight young archaeologists from Argentina, divorced from their environments. Rather, she Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, was an environmental determinist, or, some Peru, and Venezuela participated. This was an would say, an environmental possibilist, sensu attempt to establish a common typological Hardesty 1977:4-6), positing that some environ- system for Latin America and to weave a net- ments posed insuperable obstacles to the devel- work of professionals (Fowler et al.
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