archaeology: n. c. nelson 
115 
rated from the preceding by the totally different Plains culture area and lies in 
the semi-arid plateau region known culturally as the Pueblo area and geograph- 
ically as the Southwest. The niientioning of these three distinct and partly 
separated centers together in this place is made possible and necessary by the 
fact that our archaeological findings in them are identical in their general im- 
port, as will be brought out at the end of the discussion. 
The Pueblo culture area is from several standpoints our most profitable 
field for the study of primitive man. It is to us what Egypt is to the Old 
World and more. For not only have we here an abundance of ruins more or 
less ancient but we have the relatively unspoiled descendants of the builders 
still surviving, and we have documentary data concerning them reaching back 
nearly four hundred years. It is a field therefore in which the ethnologist, the 
historian, and the archaeologist can work hand in hand; and, needless to say, 
they have done so. Each mode of approach has, however, its particular limita- 
tions; and it has of late become evident that an adequate solution of the prob- 
lem presented lies in a coordination of effort. The ethnologist, e.g., sees the 
problem clearly only in its spatial dimension; the historian makes a brief be- 
ginning with the time projection but to complete his work he must of necessity 
appeal to the archaeologist. The archaeologist, on the other hand, while he 
may see the problem in both dimensions, unless already an ethnologist, is 
obliged to call upon such a specialist to assist him in the interpretation of his 
findings. The failure to fully appreciate these interrelations will probably in 
a large measure explain the history of anthropological investigation in the 
Southwest. 
History of Archaeological Investigation. — The Pueblo culture area has been 
under consideration for seventy-three years and something like three stages 
are discernible in the process. Of the numerous reports now available on the 
antiquities, those of the first thirty years were written by staff members of 
various governmental expeditions and surveys and were of a general descrip- 
tive character. About 1880 the investigation became institutionalized, so to 
speak. Specialists in history, ethnology, and archaeology entered the field 
and all have delivered more or less convincing reports on the problem from their 
particular points of view. But, naturally enough, only the historian has in any 
sense finished his task. The ethnologist has his work vv^ell under way; while as 
for the archaeologist — in spite of all he has done and written — his results have 
not until lately been carried much beyond the analytic stage. During the 
last few years finally there has been a distinct effort on the part of several in- 
vestigators to reach the synthetic level or in other words to get beyond the 
descriptive and classificatory routine work to really interpretative results. It 
is pleasant in this connection to be able to say that the American Museum's 
archaeological work, prolonged now for seven years and taken part in by 
Messrs. Leslie Spier and Earl H. Morris as well as the writer, has been pri- 
marily of this interpretative character. We have entered the field not so much 
to recover specimens as to solve problems. Owing to the immensity of the 
