Linda Cordell (1943-2013) was a pioneering researcher of the American Southwest who helped shape the modern archaeology of the region, particularly in the upper Rio Grande. A native of New York City, Cordell first came to the Southwest in 1964 at age twenty-one to participate in an archaeological field school at Sapawe Pueblo in northern New Mexico under the direction of Florence Hawley Ellis. It was only one of the few
field schools that would accept women in 1964. She not only learned the basics of field work that summer, but began a lifelong romance with the ancient cultures of the Southwest. This volume, with contributions from colleagues and former students, documents her outstanding fifty-year career in archaeology and how she shaped the discipline.
Her Ph.D. dissertation from the University of California, Santa Barbara modeled settlement patterns on Wetherill Mesa in Mesa Verde National Park, where she developed new methods and technologies. Her professional career included being a professor, researcher, author, field school director, department chair, and museum specialist. She was on the faculty of the University of New Mexico, the California Academy of Sciences, and the University of Colorado, where she also directed the Museum of Natural History.
Cordell was in the field almost every summer, doing groundbreaking research on the ancient Pueblo people of the region and teaching scores of students the basics of field methodology. She pioneered new technologies such as remote sensing and adopted new methods for studying ceramics. She was also involved with contemporary Native communities throughout her career.
This volume is composed of seventeen essays by twenty-nine scholars who worked with Cordell. They relate the varied aspects of her work and the impact she had on Southwestern archaeology, with an emphasis on the specialties with which she was most involved. With 112 illustrations and eleven maps, this work is a fitting tribute to a renowned scholar who inspired an entire generation of archaeologists. It is also a tribute to an extraordinary individual who was admired and loved by those lucky enough to come under her influence.
