RICHARD WETHERILL – ANASAZI. Pioneer Explorer of Ancient Ruins in the American Southwest [SOLD]

RICHARD WETHERILL – ANASAZI.  Pioneer Explorer of Ancient Ruins in the American Southwest

By Frank McNitt

Publisher: The University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque

First edition published in 1957.

This revised edition published in 1966

Hardcover with slip jacket, 370 pages, illustrated

Synopsis

The first man to uncover many of America’s most spectacular archaeological sites in the remote areas of the “Four Corners” country of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, was Richard Wetherill.  Eldest of five brothers, Richard was a quiet Quaker with a flair for bad luck.  With only a high school education, he used intelligence and experience to develop systematic methods of excavating, photographing, cataloging and recording prehistoric materials at a time when professional scientists were concerned mainly with living Indians.  He opened a whole chapter in American archaeology when he found and described the Basket Maker sites of Grand Gulch, Utah.

Richard Wetherill dedicated his life to the discovery of evidences of ancient man in the Southwest, and for his pains was vilified by individuals and three times investigated by governmental agencies.  His murder by a Navajo provoked a full-scale post-mortem, and falsehoods about him only increased after his death.  Richard had blundered into hatreds and jealousies which have obscured the credit due his achievements.

This revised edition adds fresh information gleaned during the author’s additional research on Richard Wetherill.  A new appendix presents hitherto unpublished correspondence between Richard and a Denver girl, Marcia Lorraine Billings.