School of American Archaeology
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Former names
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School of American Archaeology, School of American Research |
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| Type | Private |
| Founder | Alice Cunningham Fletcher |
| President | Michael F. Brown |
| Location | Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S. |
| Website | sarweb |
The School for Advanced Research (SAR), until 2007 known as the School of American Research and founded in 1907 as the School for American Archaeology (SAA), is an advanced research center located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. Since 1967, the scope of the school's activities has embraced a global perspective through programs to encourage advanced scholarship in anthropology and related social science disciplines and the humanities, and to facilitate the work of Native American scholars and artists. SAR offers residential fellowships for artists and scholars, and it publishes academic and popular non-fiction books through SAR Press.
In the early years of the 20th century, archaeology was a young discipline with roots in historical studies of Old World antiquities. In 1906 Alice Cunningham Fletcher, an anthropologist and ethnographer of Plains Indian groups, was on the American Committee of the Archaeological Institute of America. The AIA, founded in Boston in 1879, had schools in Athens, Rome, and Palestine that sponsored research on classical civilization and promoted professional standards in archaeology. Fletcher wanted to establish an "Americanist" center to train students in the profession of archaeology, to engage in anthropological research in the Americas, and to preserve and study the unique cultural heritage of the American Southwest. Her aims coincided with those of Edgar Lee Hewett, an educator and amateur archaeologist whom she met in Mexico in 1906.
Nicknamed "El Toro," Hewett was a controversial figure. He served as president of New Mexico Normal School in Las Vegas (now New Mexico Highlands University) from 1898 to 1903, where he taught some of the first anthropology courses to be offered at any U.S. college. His work lobbying for the protection of archaeological sites led to the creation of Mesa Verde National Park and the passage of the U.S. Antiquities Act of 1906.
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