Page 3

the ceremonial cave under the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán that probably played a key role in the founding and the general structural plan of that ancient city. His restoration of the Palace of Quetzalpopalotl at Teotihuacán has been considered excessive by some specialists, but it constituted a major success in making a 1,500-year-old building understandable for thousands of visitors.

Acosta’s investigations in Oaxaca with Alfonso Caso and ignacio bernal during three decades were fundamental for the development of Mexican archaeology and produced several classic reports, including The Ceramics of Monte Albán (1967) and, on Tula, Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropologicos. While Acosta directed his most consequential field seasons at Tula, he was also the field director of Caso’s program at Monte Albán.

On the basis of his work at Tula, Acosta’s name can be added to the very short list of archaeologists who have rediscovered major ancient civilizations. Acosta proved that ruins at Tula, in the modern Mexican state of Hidalgo, were in fact those of the legendary city of Tollan, capital of the Toltec Empire during the tenth and eleventh centuries a.d. The major part of Acosta’s work at Tula was devoted to the excavation and restoration of many of the buildings on the main plaza. These were some of the best investigations of pre-Hispanic architecture ever conducted in Mexico. Acosta’s program at Tula functioned as field training for young archaeologists and anthropologists. He died in Mexico City on March 5, 1975.

Roberto Cobean and Alba Guadalupe Mastache Flores

Adams, Robert McCormick

(1926– )

Born in Chicago and educated in a progressive environment, Robert McCormick Adams developed an interest in archaeology that can be traced to childhood experiences in the American Southwest. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and subsequently enrolled at the University of Chicago to study social sciences. In 1950, Adams, with Linda and robert braidwood, participated in an excavation at jarmo in Iraq. During fieldwork there Adams met the social anthropologist Fredrik Barth, and Barth convinced Adams to continue with graduate school. Important intellectual influences on Adams at the University of Chicago came from the social anthropologist Fred Eggan, with his stress on the comparative method, and from Robert Braidwood, who advocated a multidisciplinary approach to prehistoric archaeology. Adams was also influenced by the work of v. gordon childe and his concern with technology, demography, internal social organization, and social evolution. Another critical influence was the New World archaeologist gordon willey, who had done pioneering reconnaissance surveys in the virú valley of peru, using settlement patterns and demography.

In the field of Near Eastern history, Adams worked with the Danish Sumerologist Thorkild Jacobsen, who had worked on archaeological projects sponsored by the University of Chicago’s oriental institute. Jacobsen was not only an expert in third millennium b.c. history and the Sumerian language, he was also an avid reader and writer in the philosophy of history. Adams’s interest and training in ecology came in part from his studies and collegial relationships with Sherwood Washburn and Clark Howell in the Department of Anthropology at Chicago and from Washburn’s running argument with the social anthropologist Robert Redfield.

Adams received his M.A. at Chicago in 1952, writing on Jarmo pottery and stone vessel industries, and while he was working toward his doctorate, he was appointed to a combined position divided between the Oriental Institute and the Department of Anthropology. Adams received his Ph.D. in 1956 and held this same combined position for the duration of his academic career at Chicago.

Adams undertook fieldwork in mexico and then returned to fieldwork in Iraq in the 1950s and 1960s, where he continued to work until the 1970s when politics made it impossible to continue