Walter Taylor (archaeologist)

Walter Willard Taylor, Jr. (1913–1997) was an American anthropologist and archaeologist most famous for his work at Coahuila in Mexico and his "Conjunctive archaeology", a method of studying the past combining elements of both the traditional archaeology of the period and the allied field of anthropology. This was exemplified by his work A Study of Archeology.

Taylor was born in Chicago, but he grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut and attended The Hotchkiss School. Although studying geology, while at Yale University Taylor became interested in anthropology and archaeology. He graduated in 1935, and that summer began working for the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, where he was influenced by the holistic environmental philosophy of Lyndon Hargrave.

After three years in the field, he enrolled for a Ph.D. in anthropology at Harvard in 1938. When World War II broke out, Taylor enlisted in the U.S. Marines, serving in Europe and being parachuted into enemy territory to assist local resistance groups. He was badly wounded by a grenade and captured in southern France in 1944 and was not released from a German prisoner-of-war camp until the end of the war in Europe. During his imprisonment, he began teaching anthropology to his fellow prisoners. He earned a Purple Heart and Bronze Star and remained a captain until 1955.

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