As the 19th century came to a close, Victorian America found a new fascination with the West, and in particular the ancient ruins of the Southwest and the native peoples descended from them. Eastern centers of wealth were building huge new museums and were in need of spectacular collections to fill them. In the Southwest, new institutions were being formed to capture the local heritage and protect it from outsiders. And a market was developing for ancient Southwestern artifacts, attracting relic collectors of myriad stripes.
These three forces were bound to come in conflict as the emerging science of archaeology sought to understand the ancient cultures of the Southwest. Snead shows how competition for status and prestige shaped modern Southwestern archaeology. The Eastern “museum men” were initially the allies of the early relic hunters, more concerned with trophies from Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and Bandelier than knowledge. But before long, some of those Easterners were becoming Southwestern professional archaeologists.
It was a time and place where legends in archaeology were made: Frederick Ward Putnam of the Peabody in Boston; Nels Nelson of American Museum in New York; Edgar Lee Hewitt of Santa Fe; Frederick Hyde; and, of course, Richard Weatherill, the cowboy who discovered Mesa Verde. Ruins and Rivals captures the flavor of digs and discoveries, scholars and scoundrels.
