Richard MacNeish

At the University of Chicago, he participated in field schools that exposed him to the methods and theories of James A. Ford, William Haag, Jesse D. Jennings, John Cotter, Glen Black, Tom Lewis, and Madeline Kneberg. In addition, he was heavily influenced by Julian Steward's Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups (1938). He earned his B.A. in 1940, his M.A. in 1944 and his Ph.D. in 1949. That same year, while working in the Sierra de Tamaulipas, Mexico, MacNeish discovered primitive teosinte corncobs in context with human habitations dating back several thousand years. This achievement spurred his lifelong interest in the origins of agriculture and society that would take him throughout Central and South America, eventually to China and, nearly, to Turkey. This last trip was put on hold when doctors ordered him to rest after a mild heart attack. After a long, varied and influential career, Richard MacNeish at age 83 died on January 16, 2001 in a car accident while touring Pre-Columbian Maya sites in Belize.

In 1990, while digging at Pendejo Cave in southern New Mexico, MacNeish discovered the remains of a prehistoric horse, which were found above several other cultural layers in the cave.

In addition to the field and lab work MacNeish has been a professor at Boston University and the University of Calgary, where he helped to found their Department of Archaeology. He was the Whidden Lecturer at McMaster University, Senior Archaeologist at the National Museum of Canada, and was the director of the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology in Andover, Massachusetts. When he left the museum in 1983, instead of retiring, he established the Andover Foundation for Archaeological Research (AFAR), named himself Director of Research and continued his work in the American Southwest and China.

MacNeish's ultimate goal was to make archaeology more of a science. He was a processual archaeologist who championed the necessity of experimental archaeology and hypothesis testing in the exploration of human cultural ecology. By adopting, creating or championing methods that made archaeological results more generalizable and amenable to hypothesis testing MacNeish was attempting to learn, and teach, about the broader patterns of social change that can inform our choices in the future; he wished to use archaeology to improve the human condition. "... laws of cultural change may be of use not only in explaining the past, but more important, in predicting the future or at least indicating the steps in cultural change we might take in the future". His ultimate legacy, the sum total of all of his individual accomplishments in methodology and theory, was his commitment to archaeology as a science that could produce laws and theories to aid humanity in the future. In his autobiographical discussion of American archaeology (1978), MacNeish writes, "We are still fumbling along, perfecting techniques as well as improving methodology, and our field – as well as I – have a long way to go".

MacNeish was awarded honorary degrees from the Universidad de San Cristobal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, Peru and Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, British Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He served as President of the Society for American Archaeology and has received numerous awards, including the Kidder Medal from the American Anthropological Association, the Spinden Medal for Archaeology from the Smithsonian Institution, and the Fiftieth Anniversary Award for Outstanding Contributions to American Archaeology from the Society for American Archaeology. In 1977 he was awarded the Cornplanter Medal for his work in Iroquois research. In addition he has been honored by institutions for his work in Mexico and China.

In the 1960s, MacNeish discovered the Coxcatlan Cave in Puebla, Mexico. This was a very important site of early maize domestication.

In 1949, MacNeish went to work for the National Museum of Canada. With this he began a system of spending his summers surveying and excavating in Northern and Western Canada and his winters searching for evidence of the origins of agriculture across Central America. "MacNeish enjoyed saying 'I have as much sense as a duck – I fly south in the winter'". Realizing that a random search for sites over these huge swathes of territory would be difficult and inefficient, he pioneered a five-step process that was based on making and then testing hypotheses about ancient environments and human behavior in them. These steps were:

At the urging of several Southwestern archaeologists, MacNeish prepared to transfer to the University of Chicago to study under Fay-Cooper Cole. Before doing so, however, he had an unrelated feat to achieve. As a child, his mother enrolled him in boxing lessons and he had become quite accomplished. Now, he wanted to win a Golden Gloves championship. He did so in New York in 1938, wearing a kilt in the final bout as a tribute to his Scottish ancestry. This skill continued to provide him with spending money during his student years.

In 1936, MacNeish started his university career at Colgate College (now Colgate University) and participated in several archaeological field schools in New York and Arizona where he learned important excavation skills that he would later modify to create his own excavation techniques. Of this time, MacNeish writes: "My energy was boundless: I dug, I hiked, I climbed cliffs, I learned, I went to dances, I mixed cement by hand, I caught rattlesnakes, I packed mules. Most important, I did and talked archaeology morning, noon, and night – and loved every moment of it". He continued to be influenced by Dr. Kidder, and refined his field archaeology methods under George Brainerd, eventually forming his personal excavation technique La Perre.

Richard Stockton MacNeish (April 29, 1918 – January 16, 2001), known to many as "Scotty", was an American archaeologist. His fieldwork revolutionized the understanding of the development of agriculture in the New World and the prehistory of several regions of Canada, the United States and Central and South America. He pioneered new methods in fieldwork and materials analysis and brought attention to the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration. His legacy has influenced generations of archaeologists.

Richard Stockton MacNeish was born April 29, 1918 in New York City. His interest in archaeology started at a young age, sparked by a hastily created report on the Maya for an art history class when he was twelve. A year later he wrote to prominent Maya archaeologist Dr. A.V. Kidder asking for a job at his dig at Chichen Itza. Although his request was gently refused, Kidder encouraged MacNeish to study hard and become an archaeologist.