MacNeish, Richard Stockton, 1918-2001

Richard Stockton "Scotty" MacNeish was a significant figure in American Archaeology in the second half of the 20th century. His style of interdisciplinary team archaeology focused on the origins of agriculture in the New World and resulted in major excavations in Mexico, Peru, and Belize. The projects in the Tehuacán Valley in Mexico and the Ayacucho Valley in Peru established deep cultural sequences and provided crucial insight into the process of plant and animal domestication. These oft-cited works are considered some of the most important interdisciplinary studies of 20th-century American archaeology. MacNeish's contributions to archaeology were acknowledged through more than a dozen medals and honors, including election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1974. MacNeish was born in New York City to parents Harris Franklin and Elizabeth Stockton MacNeish. He grew up in Eastchester, NY, and received his BA (1940), MA (1944) and PhD (1949) from the University of Chicago. He was married, first to June Helm, 1945-1958, then to Diana Walter in 1963, with whom he raised two sons, Richard Roderick and Alexander Stockton. He was Senior/Chief Archaeologist at the National Museum of Canada, 1949-1962, and headed the University of Calgary's Department of Archaeology, 1964-1968. In 1969, he was appointed the fifth director of the Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology, staying there until 1983. From 1982-1986 he taught in the Department of Archaeology at Boston University. In 1984 he established the Andover Foundation for Archaeological Research (AFAR), a non-profit organization that served to fund his excavation projects. He died at age 82 in Belize.