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(1910–1992)
Born in Paris, France, the son of a wealthy landowning Mexican family, Ignacio Bernal Garcia first studied law before transferring to study anthropology at the National Institute of Anthropology and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), from which he received a Ph.D. and an LL.D. in 1949.
Bernal is best known for his work at the great sites of monte albán, Dainzu, and others in the southern highland Mexican state of Oaxaca and for excavations and restorations at teotihuacán. He was professor of archaeology at both UNAM from 1948 and at Mexico City College from 1950 to 1962. He was director of anthropology at the University of the Americas from 1948 to 1959 and the National School of Anthropology and History from 1950 to 1955 and director of the National Museum of Anthropology from 1962 to 1968. He also worked for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) during the 1950s in the areas of international and prehistoric monument protection and education.
See also
A German archaeologist and Director of the Romisch-Germanischen Kommission in Frankfurt, a key German archaeological institution, Bersu was removed by the Nazis in 1935 for refusing to adhere to National Socialist ideology. He emigrated to Britain, where he introduced Continental methods of excavation to English archaeologists. These included the open area excavation of settlement sites, which comprised the stripping of large areas to reveal the plans of buildings and other structures and the spatial and chronological relations between them.
These methods were used in the now-classic excavations at the Iron Age farm of Little Woodbury in Wiltshire from 1938 to 1939. Little Woodbury was an oval ditched enclosure in which potholes were found. Occupied from 400 to 200 b.c., it contained one large round house, a small circular structure, four post granaries, and storage pits.
During the Second World War, Bersu excavated Iron Age houses on the Isle of Man during his internment there as a German citizen. From 1947 to 1950 he was professor of archaeology at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. In 1950 he returned to Frankfurt.
See also
German Prehistoric Archaeology
References
Evans, C. 1989. “Archaeology and Modern Times: Bersu’s Little Woodbury, 1938 and 1939.” Antiquity 63: 436–450.
In the history of Philippine archaeology the name Henry Otley Beyer is prominent. A pioneer in Philippine anthropological research, Beyer was one of the first scholars to explore the beginnings of Philippine society and culture. By organizing the enormous amount of archaeological data he collected during his years of active work in the philippines, he launched the search for explanations regarding the peopling of the archipelago and the cultural relationships that existed between Filipinos and their Southeast Asian neighbors.
Beyer was born into a pioneering German-American family in Edgewood, Iowa, on July 13, 1883. Even as a young boy he was noted to have the interests of a naturalist, and he enjoyed spending time by himself in the woods near the farm where he grew up.
Majoring in chemistry and geology, Beyer graduated from the University of Denver in 1904. During archaeological fieldwork in the summer he probed the remains of the Indians of the Southwest. This apparently was his first exposure to archaeology and he also worked on the collection of artifacts from the ruins. In 1910 he went to Harvard on a scholarship, completing a one-year graduate program in anthropology.
Beyer was first introduced to the Philippine culture when he visited the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposition in Saint Louis, Missouri. The exposition included an exhibit on Philippine ethnic groups that featured complete
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