Mason, John Alden, 1885-1967

John Alden Mason was an anthropologist and archaeologist.

From the description of Papers, ca. 1915-1967. (American Philosophical Society Library). WorldCat record id: 122523535

From the guide to the Northern Tepehuan language material, 1951, 1956, 1958, (American Philosophical Society)

The archaeologist John Alden Mason was Curator of the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania from 1926 until 1955. His research centered on the languages and cultures of the Indians of the American southwest and Mexico, including the Pima Bajo, Pima, Papago, Northern and Southern Tepehuan, and Tepecano.

Born at Orland, Indiana, on Nov 16, 1887, Mason was a naturalized Philadelphian. A graduate of Central High School, he received his bachelors degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1907, and after being beated out by Frank Speck for a Harrison Fellowship, took a position as photographer to Prof. George Byron Gordon as a means of earning money to further his education. During the next two years, Mason took classes under Speck and Edward Sapir (who arrived at Penn in 1908), and spent the field season of 1909 with Sapir working on Uintah Ute linguistics and culture. His industry paid off, and in 1910, he won a scholarship to complete doctoral studies at the University of California, where, under the direction of Alfred Kroeber, he completed a dissretation on the ethnography and languages of the Indians of central California. His dissertation resulted in his first monograph, The Ethnology of the Salinan Indians (Berkeley: Univ. of Calif., 1912), which was quickly followed by a monograph on the Mutsun dialect of Coastanoan, and later by The Language of the Salinan Indians (Berkeley: Univ. of Calif., 1918).

Even while studying for his doctorate, however, the horizons of Mason's research began to expand beyond California to include the languages and cultures of the southwestern states and Mexico. He undertook his first major expedition after receiving his degree to Jalisco, Mexico, where, with the encouragement of Franz Boas, he conducted research on the Tepecano Indians in 1911 and 1912, hoping to produce a grammar of the language and to study Tepecano religion. Despite Boas' support, however, Mason was unable to land an academic job. Boas and Sapir arranged for Mason to continue productively, undertaking an expedition to the Great Slave Lake in 1913, and to Puerto Rico in 1914-1915 to research folklore and physical anthropology.

After subsisting on grant funds and fellowship support from his old department at Berkeley, Mason landed his first professional appointment as assistant curator of Mexican and South American Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History (1916-1923), after which he became assistant curator of Mexican and Central American Archaeology at the American Museum of Natural History, 1924-1925. Despite the demands of his curatorial duties, Mason initiated several important new projects, taking part in the Field Museum's archaeological expedition to Santa Marta, Columbia,in 1922-1923, and in 1918, initiating what would become many years of research on the Pima and Papago languages (the northern relatives of Tepecano and Tepehuan). Intending his research as part of a broader study of Uto-Aztecan languages, Mason worked closely with Juan Dolores, Ruth Underhill, and others well into the 1950s.

In 1926, Mason returned to Philadelphia to become Curator at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, and despite the hardships of the Depression years, continued to expand his circle of interests--linguistic, ethnographic, and archaeological. Having taken an increasing interest in Meso-American and South American archaeology since his discovery of an important archaeological site in Puerto Rico, Mason's most productive research during the late 1920s until his retirement centered on Mayan archaeology (including work at Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and Palenque). He also worked on Aztec and Incan materials.

During his career, Mason published regularly in journals including The Museum Journal, Journal of American Folklore, International Journal of American Linguistics, and the American Anthropologist, of which was editor from 1945 through 1948. A fellow and vice president of the American Anthropological Assocation (1944) and president of the Society of American Archaeologists (1944), Mason retired from the University Museum in 1958, but remained active for several years thereafter as field advisor to the New World Archeology Foundation.

Mason married Florence Roberts on December 23, 1921 in Chicago, Illinois. The couple had one son and one daughter. Mason died in 1967 at the Bryn Mawr hospital, aged 82.

From the guide to the John Alden Mason Papers, 1904-1967, (American Philosophical Society)

Daniel Garrison Brinton, considered one of the founders of American Anthropology, was born in Thornbury, Pennsylvania and attended Yale University, awarded his A.B. in 1858. He then studied medicine at Jefferson Medical College. After attaining his medical degree in 1861, Brinton traveled and studied in Heidelberg and Paris for a year before establishing his medical practice in West Chester, Pennsylvania. During his medical studies, Brinton published "Notes on the Floridian Peninsula", which suggested his later career change.

In 1862, Brinton began his service in the Union Army, appointed acting assistant surgeon to the Federal Army at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. He rose to Surgeon-in-Chief also serving in battle at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Brinton returned to his medical practice in 1865 but retired at age 50 to devote himself to the study of Anthropology.

Brinton was appointed Professor of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia in 1884, followed in 1886, by his appointment to Professor of Archaeology and Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Brinton did not participate in field work, his investigations based on archival and library research. From 1859 to 1899, he published a total of twenty-three books and over 200 essays on mythology, folklore, ethnography, and linguistics of the American Indian from South America to Alaska. Brinton is also known for his systematic classification of the aboriginal languages of North and South America, published as The American Race, in 1891. Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature incorporates his translations and annotations of native mythology and folklore.

Brinton was instrumental in purchasing materials from Carl Hermann Berendt, a German-born natural historian, linguist, and ethnologist, now a part of the Daniel Garrison Brinton Library at the University of Pennsylvania. Brinton arranged for additional Berendt materials not available for purchase to be copied for the library. The Berendt Collection contains hand-written transcriptions of important manuscripts, in indigenous languages, from the native people in Mexico and Central America. There are 183 entries pertaining to the more than forty languages of Mexico and Central America covering the period from mid-sixteenth to late-eighteenth centuries.

Carl Hermann Berendt, born in Danzig, Germany in 1817, received his medical degree in 1842 from the University at Konigsburg. He established a medical practice in Breslau in 1843 and later taught surgery and obstetrics at the University of Breslau. In 1848, Berendt was a member of the Vor-Parlament where his liberal political views resulted in his removal to Graudenz and the loss of his University position. Then, in 1851, Berendt was exiled to America.

Berendt lived briefly in New York then traveled to Nicaragua where he spent two years investigating the natural history and anthropology of the region. This was followed by a move to Orizaba, Mexico then to Vera Cruz. Berendt stayed in the region from 1855 to 1862. He abandoned the practice of medicine and devoted himself to the natural sciences, linguistics, and ethnology, eventually gaining the sponsorship of The Smithsonian Institution to collect natural history specimens.

Berendt transcribed two important Maya vocabularies that dated from the colonial period while subsidized by the Peabody Museum at Harvard University ; the sixteenth century Diccionario de Motul by Antonio Ciudad Real and the Compendio de nombres en lengua Cakchiquel by the Franciscan priest, Pantaleon de Guzman. In 1974, Berendt settled in Copan, the center of the German coffee plantations in Honduras and purchased land with coffee groves. He returned to the United States at least once to arrange for the sale of his papers to Daniel Brinton. Berendt died of fever in Copan on May 12, 1878.

From the guide to the Daniel Garrison Brinton Mexico collection, Bulk, 1868-1891, 1868-1956, (University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives)

Piedras Negras is a Maya site in Guatemala particularly noted for the beautifully sculpted stelae and hieroglyphic inscriptions it has yielded. The site, located in the northwestern corner of the Department of Petén, Guatemala, along the Usumacinta River, which forms in this area the border between Guatemala and Mexico, was discovered in 1894 by a Mexican lumber man, and brought to the attention of Teobert Maler, a pioneer archaeologist and explorer of the Ancient Maya. Maler visited the site in 1895 and 1899 under the auspices of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, but conducted no excavations. His work consisted of disinterring and photographing the large carved stelae and other monuments. His report was published in 1901 as Volume II, No. 1 of the Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology. Thereafter the site was visited several times, beginning in 1921, by Sylvanus G. Morley for the purpose of recording glyphic inscriptions. Morley took many photographs and notes and made many drawings of the glyphs. His assistant, Oliver Ricketson, made a map of the site, which was later superseded by the map of University of Pennsylvania Museum.

Between 1931 and 1939 the University of Pennsylvania Museum conducted extensive excavations at this site. J. Alden Mason, Curator of the American Section, went to Guatemala in 1930 to select the site and obtain an excavation permit that would allow for the removal on loan to the Museum of half of the monumental sculpture uncovered by the expedition. Mason's visit also served to make renewed arrangements with Robert J. Burkitt, who was also excavating in Guatemala for the Museum at this time (see separate Record Group). Mason made some artifact collections on this trip, which are documented in the records. In December of the same year Mason visited the site again as a member of the Museum's aerial survey of Petén and Yucatan.

The site was selected because of its fine sculpture, its early origin, and the fact that little work had been done in that area of the Maya world up to that time. It was also relatively more accessible than many other Maya cities. Mason led the first two seasons of work at the site (1931–1932), and returned again in 1936 to inspect the progress of excavations. Funding for the first three seasons was provided by Eldridge R. Johnson, founder and former President of the Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, NJ. Linton Satterthwaite was Assistant Director under Mason, and directed the remaining six seasons (1933–1939, excluding 1938). The seasons ran generally from February to May, but sometimes began or ended late, that is in March and June.

The work of the first two seasons concentrated heavily on building a road to the site through the jungle and the removal of a number of monumental stone stelae and other sculpture, half of which were sent to Guatemala City and the other half to the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Included among these was Lintel 3, dated ca. 750 AD, still considered to be among the most beautiful specimens of Maya sculpture, and Stela 14 (on display in the Museum's Mesoamerican Gallery), credited with giving Tatiana Proskouriakoff the inspiration for her decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics. The second season produced a new map of the site, but also saw part of the camp catch on fire, resulting in the loss of part of the photographic record.

Under Satterthwaite's direction, the focus of the excavations shifted from the more glamorous task of bringing carved monuments to the exhibition galleries of the Museum to purely archaeological questions, such as uncovering architectural remains, establishing building sequences, and stratigraphy. Satterthwaite concentrated heavily on the architecture of the city, excavating a total of eleven temples and seventeen palaces, as well as two ball courts and a number of sweathouses. As a result the collecting of artifacts became less important in the later seasons. In 1934 and 1935 Satterthwaite visited the nearby site of Yaxchilán and in 1936 the site of Palenque, to obtain architectural data and measurements for comparative purposes. Some of the records for these trips can be found among the Piedras Negras record group, but most of them have been transferred to a separate group, Linton Satterthwaite- Various Sites (see separate listing).

The expedition staff changed almost every season, with the exception of Satterthwaite and his wife, who participated every year, and were the only Museum personnel in 1934. T. Egan Wyer was the engineer for the first season, responsible for constructing the road. Fred P. Parris, architect, took over for Wyer for the second and third seasons. He surveyed and mapped the site. Mary Butler was responsible for artifact analysis, specifically pottery, and stratigraphy. She worked in 1932 and 1933. Tatiana Proskouriakoff, an eminent figure in Maya archaeology, especially the study of Maya art, architecture, and epigraphy, began her archaeological career on the Piedras Negras expedition during the seasons of 1936 and 1937. She later worked for the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC and Harvard University. Other members of the expedition included David W. Amram, Jr. (1932), Francis M. Cresson, Jr. (1935–1937), William S., Jr. and Marian A. Godfrey (1939), and representatives of the Guatemalan Government. Marian A. Godfrey (later Boyer) eventually became Secretary (1942–1949) and Acting Director (1945–1946) of the Museum.

Most of the monuments borrowed from Guatemala were returned to the country of origin in January, 1947, after an extension to the original loan. Only Stela 14 and one leg from Altar 4 remain on display in the Museum's Mesoamerican Gallery today.

A number of publications have resulted from the findings at Piedras Negras, but Satterthwaite never finished all the reports he intended to produce. Much material remains in this collection of use to the Maya scholar and student. See the attached Appendix I for a complete list of Museum publications covering this site.

From the guide to the Piedras Negras, Guatemala expedition records, Bulk, 1931-1939, 1930-1973, (University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives)

At the turn of the century, the Río Grande de Coclé changed course, revealing the site of a pre-Columbian cemetery when pottery and gold ornaments were washed out of the river banks. Gold ornaments from the site began showing up for sale in Panama City. Thereafter the Peabody Museum of Harvard University excavated the site between 1930 and 1933, securing a number of unique specimens from a previously unknown culture.

As a result of World War II major excavations were not possible in areas such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, freeing up funding for Americanist projects. In 1940 the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology decided to investigate Sitio Conte, which belonged to a private landowner, located approximately ten miles from the Pacific Ocean in the province of Coclé about a hundred miles west of Panama City. A contract to excavate the site was made between the Museum and Señor Miguel Conte, with the full knowledge and permission of the government of Panama.

Dr. J. Alden Mason, Curator of the Museum’s American Section, was director of the expedition. Robert H. Merrill was surveyor, engineer, and photographer. John B. Corning, a research associate in the Museum, was assistant director. Corning was trained in anatomy and was in charge of the preservation of specimens. He also made motion pictures. The directors of the former Peabody Expedition, Dr. and Mrs. Samuel K. Lothrop, assisted with arrangements and accompanied the University of Pennsylvania Museum expedition for several weeks. The work was carried out during the short, dry season beginning in January, 1940 through mid-April of that year.

A very small portion of the pre-Columbian cemetery, estimated to cover four or five acres in its entirety, was selected for excavation. The expedition dug a main trench 54 feet in length, 27 feet in width, and 13 feet in depth at its maximum. A second, smaller trench was dug also. About thirty burials and/or caches were encountered, ranging from grave lots with a few vessels to burials of ten feet square containing hundreds of pottery vessels as well as objects of stone, carved bone, gold, and other materials. In the most elaborate burial, No. 11, there were twenty-three individuals, one supplying at least half of the gold objects found as well as the finest in quality. The floor and sides of this grave were virtually lined with pottery. It included one arrangement of twelve individuals laid parallel and close together in six pairs, each pair consisting of upper and lower members. The identifiable skeletons were all males of some social importance as almost all had some gold ornamentation. The one presumed by Mason to be a chief was interred with a wealth of gold.

The expedition yielded 6,600 pounds of pottery and stone. The restoration of the pottery was eventually undertaken by a WPA project in the Museum. Much of the pottery was painted in polychrome. Designs are generally conventionalized animals, but vary from simple geometric to complex pictorial. Over 120 troy ounces of gold were found. Many gold objects are of exquisite workmanship made by casting (cire perdue), hammering, and depletion gilding. Gold objects included large plaques or disks, ear-rods, nose ornaments, cuffs and anklets, pendants, chisels, bells, and beads. Most impressive are eight large plaques eight to ten inches in diameter with very ornate decoration in high repousse relief. Most of them show saurian-human and avian-human figures. Five were found on the principal individual of burial No. 11. This individual also wore a pendant of heavy gold over four inches in length in the form of a very ornate animal figure, probably a composite creature including features of reptiles, the jaguar, and turtle with a low grade emerald set in its back. Among the most interesting objects found were almost thirty animal and human figurines of carved bone, ivory, or copal resin with features of gold applied as onlays.

Little is known about the indigenous inhabitants of the large village that must have been located nearby this cemetery. Such a village cannot be identified from sixteenth-century Spanish accounts, which were written centuries after the fact. The form and decoration of the pottery are very different from the Chiriquí and Veraguas cultures of western Panama. The Coclé culture bears practically no resemblance to the cultures of the Aztecs and Mayas, and little to those of Peru. The period of burial at Sitio Conte was from ca. A.D. 450 to A.D. 900. Burial No. 11 is dated to A.D. 700-900.

• 1940 June 16 - 1940 Summer (?) : Panama Expedition -- Ref Coll- Exhibits (newsclippings) -- 4pp. catalogue
• 1950 October: Middle and South American Gold [Lower Pepper Hall?]
• 1972 March 3 - May 31 : Caribbean Splendors -- [Lower Baugh Pavilion?] -- Exhibition of objects from eight institutions, in addition to Univ. of PA Museum, sponsored by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. See Expedition v.14, n.3 (Spr, 1972) and University Museum Newsletter v. 10, n. 2 (Feb-Mar, 1972); Exhibits Dept. records, Temporary Exhibits installation photographs, Ref Coll- Exhibits (newsclippings).
• 1972 July 15 - 1972 (?) : Ancient American Gold -- [Lower Baugh Pavilion?] -- See University Museum Newsletter v.10, n.4 (Oct-Nov, 1972); plans in Exhibits Dept. records; Ref Coll- Exhibits (newsclippings).
• 1988 April 9 - May 22, : 1992 March 21 - October 18 : River of Gold: Pre-Columbian Treasures from Sitio Conte -- Administrative Wing, 2nd Fl., corridor east; traveling exhibition; 132 pp. illustrated catalogue with same title, 1992; Reference Collection- Exhibits.
• 1988 April 6, 7, and 12, and 1992 May 5: Archival Treasures from Sitio Conte -- Elkins Reading Room; Archival exhibits file.

From the guide to the Sitio Conte, Panama expedition records, Bulk, 1939-1942, 1929-1970, (University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives)

J. Alden Mason, noted archaeological anthropologist and linguist, was born in Orland, Indiana but moved to the Germantown area of Philadelphia early in his life. He attained his A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907 and pursued his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley completing his dissertation on the ethnography of the Salinan Indians of California. Following the completion of his Ph.D., Mason was chosen to represent the state of Pennsylvania for two seasons in Mexico at the International School of Archaeology and Ethnology, a joint enterprise between Mexico and the United States.

Mason's linguistic work centered on the Tepecano Indians of Mexico and he traveled to sites near Durango, lower Pima Bajo, Sonora, and Chihuahua in six expeditions beginning in 1911. The languages of this region are part of the Piman family described by Mason as "six slightly differentiated languages for a thousand miles down the Mexican Sierra Madre from Arizona to Jalisco." The initial trip focused on the ceremonialism and prayers of the Tepecano culture, including botany and cosmological notes. Mason published a "short grammar" based on this trip in 1917. He promised a "larger grammar of Papago will soon be published." The second trip in 1930 was an aerial survey of land never before seen from the air. The trip was financed by Percy C. Madeira, Jr., nephew of Louis C. Madeira and later elected to the Board of Managers of the Museum. Madeira accompanied Mason in a twin-motor Sikorsky plane flown by two Pan American pilots.

The Durango Expedition, Expedition III, conducted in 1936 is documented in 162 photographs and 8 field notebooks. In 1947-1948, Mason visited the Northern Tepehuan for linguistic and archaeological research. (Expedition IV) He shot a twenty minute film during the trip, "Unedited Pictures of the Southern Tepehuan Indians and the Region of Durango, Mexico" which is part of the Museum collection. A brief trip in 1951 produced photographs of the Northern Tepehuan area in Chihuahua. Mason returned in 1954 for Expedition V to study the Nevome language and culture.

Mason's curatorial career began in 1917 as an Assistant Curator of Mexican and South American Archaeology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He married Florence Roberts in 1921. Mason remained at the Field Museum until 1924 when he assumed an Assistant Curator position at the American Museum of Natural History. Mason held this position briefly as he moved to The University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania as Curator in 1925. He gave 25 years of service to the Museum, becoming Emeritus Curator of the American Indian Section in 1955.

Mason published regularly in The Museum Journal, Journal of American Folklore, International Journal of American Linguistics, and American Anthropologist, serving as editor of American Anthropologist from 1945 to 1948. His published works included "The Language of the Papago Indians" and "The Languages of the South American Indians" among others.

When Mason retired from the museum in 1955, he continued his contributions including a dig at Chiapas, Mexico in 1958 while serving as Editor and Archaeological Advisor to the New World Archaeology Foundation. Mason held this post until his death in 1967.

From the guide to the J. Alden Mason linguistic expeditions to Mexico records, Bulk, 1912-1936, 1912-1954, (University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives)

J. Alden Mason, noted archaeological anthropologist and linguist, was born in Orland, Indiana and attended school in Philadelphia attaining his A.B. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907. He pursued his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley completing his dissertation on the ethnography of the Salinan Indians of California. Mason was influenced by Alfred J. Kroeber while at Berkeley and Edward Sapir of the University of Pennsylvania. Following the completion of his Ph.D., Mason was chosen to represent the state of Pennsylvania for two seasons in Mexico at the International School of Archaeology and Ethnology, a joint enterprise between Mexico and the United States. He then spent more than a year in Puerto Rico recording folktales in original dialects. His association with the International School of Archaeology and Ethnology brought him into close contact with Franz Boas of Columbia University.

In 1914, Mason traveled to Puerto Rico to learn about the folktales of the native people. He visited Utuado, Coamo, San German, and Loiza and transcribed in the local dialect various tales, poetry, and some music. His field notebooks contain the names of the men who told the stories along with brief comments from Mason about their appearance, dialect, or diction. Some of these stories, songs, and poems have been transcribed and published. Wax recordings of the material exist at the Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore and Linguistics at the University of Indiana. Several stories were translated and sent to Mason's daughter, Kathy.

Mason's curatorial career began in 1917 as an Assistant Curator of Mexican and South American Archaeology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He married Florence Roberts in 1921. Mason remained at the Field Museum until 1924 when he assumed an Assistant Curator position at the American Museum of Natural History. Mason held this position briefly as he moved to The University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania as Curator in 1925. He gave 25 years of service to the Museum, becoming Emeritus Curator of the American Indian Section in 1955.

Mason published regularly in The Museum Journal, Journal of American Folklore, International Journal of American Linguistics, and American Anthropologist, serving as editor of American Anthropologist from 1945 to 1948. His published works included "The Language of the Papago Indians" and "The Languages of the South American Indians" among others.

In addition to linguistics, Mason developed wide interests in his fieldwork including archaeology, ethnology, and folklore, particularly from Latin America. After 1916, he focused on the Uto-Aztecan languages of northern Mexico and the southwestern part of the United States. He also worked in four eastern states in the United States, and Puerto Rico, Colombia, Panama, and Guatemala. He was Field Director of the first Eldridge R. Johnson Piedras Negras Expedition returning with "Lintel 3" a Maya carved stone wall-panel on loan to the Penn Museum from 1931 to 1946 and stone stelae dating to A.D. 514.

When Mason retired from the museum in 1955, he continued his contributions including a dig at Chiapas, Mexico in 1958 while serving as Editor and Archaeological Advisor to the New World Archaeology Foundation. Mason held this post until his death in 1967.

From the guide to the J. Alden Mason Puerto Rican survey records, Bulk, 1914-1915, 1914-1960, (University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives)