Erle Stanley Gardner, Clement W. Meighan, and Baja California's
The Novelist, the Professor, and the Paintings: Erle Stanley Gardner, Clement W. Meighan, and Baja California’s Great Murals Don Laylander Abstract into a mountain village in the Sierra de San Francisco, In 1962, 37-year-old UCLA professor Clem Meighan joined the lying within what was then the Territorio Sur de Baja famed 72-year-old novelist Erle Stanley Gardner to collaborate in California. They traveled on burros with local guides a venture to document and study the Great Mural pictographs in to one of the Great Mural sites. Gardner determined to central Baja California’s Sierra de San Francisco. Their investiga- tions touched off a florescence of interest in the paintings during the return soon for a more extensive investigation of his decades that followed. The two men’s innovations and their varied discoveries. approaches to the subject highlight still-pertinent themes in the peninsula’s evolving prehistoric archaeology, including problems of discovery, description, analysis, speculation, and evidence-based The follow-up expedition, sponsored by the novelist interpretation. and authorized by Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), was launched in The Novelist and the Professor March and April 1962. It involved the use of “two helicopters, two camping vehicles, two pickup trucks, Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) a four-wheel-drive station wagon and four Burritos (compact scooters ideal for short jaunts over tough ter- Gardner was an extremely prolific writer (Figure 1). rain)” (Gardner 1962a:63). Now included in Gardner’s During more than half a century, he published scores 17-person crew were Life magazine photographer Nat of novels, along with short stories and travel accounts, Farbman and UCLA anthropology professor Clem both under his own name and using at least 11 differ- Meighan.
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