A great American scholar. Nowhere is Adolph Bandelier so aptly described as on the small plaque in the patio of the visitors’ center at Bandelier National Monument in northern New Mexico. With almost no formal education, Bandelier pioneered the study of archaeology and ethnology in the American Southwest and beyond.
Authors Charles Lange and Carroll Riley taught anthropology at Southern Illinois University and have spent much of the past 30 years studying Adolph Bandelier. Their first work, published as four volumes between 1966 and 1984, was Bandelier’s voluminous Southwestern journals. Building on this early research, Lange and Riley have published the first English biography of the legendary anthropologist.
In 1880, 40-year-old Adolph Bandelier was in the family banking business in a small town near St. Louis. Over the next 34 years, Bandelier traveled throughout the Southwest, Mexico, and South America, compiling volumes of information on the native and Spanish culture of the New World. He has been called an anthropologist, archaeologist, archivist, ethnographer, explorer, geographer, artist, historian, and scientist. He learned as he explored, having no manuals to guide his way. His is an adventure Lange and Riley enjoy sharing with their readers.
