FRANCISCAN AWATOVI
by John OtisBrew '28, et al. Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. XXXVI,1949, 362 pages, 17 plates, I color plate, and45 illustrations in the text. $5.85, paper.
This volume is the third in a series of reports on the results of the Awatovi Expedition of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard. The Expedition spent five years, from 1935-1939, in field research under the direction of Dr. John Otis Brew, and its studies were generally centered around the prehistory of the Hopi Indian country in northeastern Arizona. The present volume, as its subtitle indicates, is concerned with the scientific excavation and conjectural reconstruction of a 17th-century Spanish mission establishment at the Hopi Indian town of Awatovi.
Of the four main sections of the report, the first two have been written by Brew and deal respectively with the history of Awatovi and the actual conduct of the archeological investigations there. The story of the conquest of this region by the Spanish Conquistadores and the first Franciscan missionaries is a fascinating one, and here it is outlined in sufficiently rich detail to provide an excellent background of understanding for the remainder of the report. The section dealing with the excavation shows Brew's customary lucid approach which is such that even the non-specialist can derive a great deal of enjoyment and benefit from reading it. At each step of the way the archeological work is seen to integrate with and corroborate the succession of known historical events, and a new vitality is thus lent to the dead past.
The third part of the report, written by Ross Gordon Montgomery, Member of the American Institute of Architects, is an analy American restoration of Spanish Awatovi. While this section is largely conjectural, as the author himself is the first to stress, it is still the result of Montgomery's professional knowledge of religious architecture and his keen interest in the history of the Franciscan missionary movement in the New World. As such it must bear the highest degree of probability. Furthermore, it is not merely the shells of the buildings which are made to rise again, but the very lives of the men who built them are renewed, and a sympathetic reader is transported back to the life and times of the 17th-century Spanish mission.
Mr. Watson Smith is the author of the fourth section which describes the mural decorations of the mission and gives further comparative data on the Mexican tile industry. To those who would know more about the exhaustive techniques employed by present-day archeologists in certain phases of their work, this paper will be a revelation.
As an appendix to section two, J. Franklin Ewing, S.J. has contributed a brief account concerning the religious medals found during the excavations at Awatovi. This includes an interesting discussion of the theology and history of such medals.
This particular report of the Awatovi Expedition impresses me as one of the modern highlights in the study of American archeology for the simple reason that it can be read with pleasure and profit by the expert and layman alike. An archeological colleague will find here all the data of a careful scientific job, but they are clothed in a fabric of readability which is all too frequently lacking in reports of this nature. If one of the ends of archeology is to reconstruct not only history, but the lives, manners, and thought patterns of the people who made it, a very high and laudable degree of success has been attained in this report.
