Discovering the MogollonPrehistory, Personality and Place: Emil W. Haury and the Mogollon Controversy. By Jefferson J. Reid and Stephanie M. Whittlesey. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010.

Abstract

How are creation of knowledge and controversy linked? And what lessons can we take from past archaeological debates? This pithy book is an insightful account of an intellectual struggle that ran for nearly two decades in the American Southwest over the validity of the Mogollon culture discovered by Emil Haury (1936). The book’s title captures two interrelated determinants of the debate. During the 1930s and 1940s the center of gravity in Southwest archaeology was shifting from East Coast universities and their scholars, particularly Harvard University, to the universities in the West, such as the University of Arizona. While advocates of the Mogollon culture concept, Jefferson Reid and Stephanie Whittlesey do not mythologize the debate but instead weave oral and written historical sources, discussions of personalities, and archaeological sites into an informative history. The chapters are laid out chronologically, reviewing highlights in the debate. In the process they also reveal much about the University of Arizona’s contribution to archaeology of the American Southwest. There are roughly three parts to the story. The first chapters review Haury’s seminal years as a student and eventually as a young professional working at the Gila Pueblo Foundation. This period culminates in his publication of The Mogollon Culture of Southwestern New Mexico in 1936. The second period covers the 20 years of debate over that publication. During this period as head of the Department of Anthropology and director of the Arizona State Museum, Haury brings his resources and fieldwork to bear on the Mogollon question. The debate effectively ends in 1955 with the publication of Joe Ben Wheat’s (1955) Mogollon Culture prior to AD 1000. The last chapters review the influence the New Archaeology had on the topic. Although there were still some scholars prepared to fight on, many