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Gordon Willey




Willey received his bachelors Degree in 1935 and his Masters Degree in 1936 from the University Of Arizona in Anthropology . He then got his Ph. D. from Columbia University in New York City . He worked as an anthropologist for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. and then went to teach at Harvard University .

He went on archaeological expeditions in Peru , Panama , Nicaragua , and Honduras . He received numerous awards, and was well known as a new world archaeologist and theorist, particularly for his studies in the pattern of settlements of native societies. He also wrote many books including some in the Archaeology of North America .

Perhaps his most significant work was the 1953 work ''Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Viru Valley , Peru'' which launched the new archaeological interest in settlement patterns. This first major study of settlement patterns was a great bolster to the New Archaeology , associated with Lewis Binford among others because it focused not on the pottery chronologies of urban areas, but rather on the function of smaller satellite settlements and ceramic scatters across a landscape. This method continues in archaeology to this day.


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