Kate Blankenship

Principles of Archaeology

September 20, 2010

Gordon Randolph Willey and the Development of Settlement Pattern

Archaeology

The 20th century saw the development of revolutionary new

methodologies and theories in the field of archaeology. One of the

most significant new approaches was that of settlement pattern

studies, which sought to understand the development of a culture by

examining the way its settlements are distributed across the

landscape, and how this changes over time. The pioneer of settlement

pattern analysis in archaeology was Gordon Randolph Willey, an

archaeologist who worked at sites throughout the Americas. This paper

will briefly review Willey’s early academic career, then focus on his

application of the settlement pattern approach in archaeology and how

his work had an impact on the field of modern archaeology.

Willey was born in Iowa, in 1913. As a young man, he attended

the University of Arizona, where he received both his B.A. and M.A. in

Anthropology under the supervision of Byron Cummings, with a

regional focus in the Southwestern United States (Figure 1). After his

Masters degree, he began work in the Southeastern United States for

the Works Progress Administration under the supervision of Arthur

Kelly; this experience introduced him to the challenges of coordinating

large archaeological excavations. In 1938, he moved to New Orleans to

work with James Ford on the Federal Relief Project. Through working

with Ford, Willey developed a strong interest in chronology and

ceramics, and how they could reflect culture change through time. He

was admitted to Columbia University’s Ph.D. program in Anthropology

in 1939 and carried out excavations on the Gulf Coast of Florida

(which led to the publication of the book Archaeology of the Florida

Gulf Coast in 1949). For his dissertation, Willey conducted excavations

in Peru, where he would eventually carry out his monumental Virú

Valley project.

After receiving his doctorate, Willey began work at the

Smithsonian Institution with Julian Steward on The Handbook of South

American Indians. In 1946, as Willey was preparing to carry out

excavations in Peru’s Virú Valley, Steward, an ethnologist (Figure 2),

suggested that Willey apply a “settlement pattern” approach, and

examine how the people of the Virú Valley had situated their

settlements across the ancient landscape, and what this implied about

their cultural development (Willey 1974). While other members of the

project dug test pits and tried to establish ceramic chronologies, Willey

surveyed the numerous human settlements in the valley, focusing on

their size, distribution, density, and architectural styles (Figure 3).

Although the other members of the project found it difficult to

synthesize their data (a comprehensive monograph documenting the

project was never published [Willey 1974: 154]), Willey’s settlement

pattern work led to the publication of his book Prehistoric Settlement

Patterns in the Virú Valley, Peru (Willey 1953).

Although Willey was initially skeptical of Steward’s suggestion,

the settlement pattern survey that he carried out during the Virú Valley

project demonstrated the utility of the approach to the archaeological

community. Settlement pattern analysis was established as a vital

technique for understanding not only ecological adaptations, but how

political, economical and cultural change also influenced the way

ancient people arranged themselves on the landscape (Trigger 1996:

377). This method also helped archaeologists to move beyond the

simple classificatory and descriptive approaches which had dominated

the field at the time of Willey’s project, and begin to look at how

artifacts and architecture actually functioned in ancient societies

(Sabloff 2004: 408).

After his groundbreaking Virú Valley project, the quality of

Willey’s work brought him to the attention of Alfred Tozzer, who

appointed him to the position of Bowditch Professor at Harvard in

1949. Because of this, Willey’s research shifted to the Maya area,

where he supervised a number of excavations, such as the Belize

Valley settlement patterns project (Figure 4), as well as organizing

projects at the sites of Altar de Sacrificios, Seibal, and Copan. He was

also known for thoroughly publishing the results of his investigations,

as well as his ability to synthesize large amounts of data in a coherent

and unbiased way (Fash 2003: 174). Despite his significant

methodological contributions to archaeology, Willey avoided

substantive teaching, administrative and field work responsibilities

after his appointment to the Bowditch professorship, although he

continued to publish extensively (see Willey 1966, 1971, 1974, 1988;

Willey and Phillips 1958; and Willey and Sabloff 1974).

During his tenure as the Bowditch professor (Figure 5), Willey

collaborated with and influenced many of the important Mesoamerican

archaeologists of the latter half of the 20th century, including Michael

Coe, Jeremy Sabloff, William Sanders and William Fash. His settlement

pattern approach also directly led to numerous archaeological

investigations and publications on Mesoamerica, such as Lowland

Maya Settlement Patterns (Ashmore 1981), as well as other

archaeological work throughout the world, in such places as China

(Chang 1963), India (Lal 1984), and Egypt (Butzer 1976).

Although he always humbly gave credit to Julian Steward for the

settlement pattern approach which he so innovatively applied (Fash

2003: 171), Gordon Willey can truly be called the founder of settlement

pattern studies in archaeology. Though he organized a number of

notable archaeological projects in the years after the Virú Valley

project, as well as writing numerous books and papers, it is his

methodological approach that has had the most significant long-term

impact on the modern field of archaeology.

Figure 1: Willey on the right in black, at University of Arizona’s Kinishba

project

Figure 2: Julian Steward

Figure 3: One of the maps produced by Willey during his Virú Valley

Project

Figure 4: Willey (in pit) excavating in the Belize Valley

Figure 5: Gordon Willey’s official Harvard portrait

Works Cited

Ashmore, Wendy, ed. Lowland Maya Settlement Patterns. Albuquerque:

University of New Mexico Press, 1981. Print.

Butzer, Karl. Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1976. Print.

Chang, K.C. The Archaeology of Ancient China. New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1963. Print.

Fash, William L. “Sprinter, Wordsmith, Mentor, and Sage: The life of

Gordon Randolph Willey, 1913-2002.” Ancient Mesoamerica 14

(2003): 169-177. Print.

Lal, Makkhan. Settlement History and Rise of Civilization in Ganga-

Yamuna Doab. Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 1984. Print.

Sabloff, Jeremy A. “Gordon Randolph Willey, 7 March 1913 - 28 April

2002.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 148.3

(2004): 405-410. Print.

Trigger, Bruce G. A History of Archaeological Thought. 2nd ed.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Print.

Willey, Gordon R. Archaeology of the Florida Gulf Coast. Washington,

D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1949. Print.

- - -. Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Virú Valley, Peru.

Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American

Ethnology, 1953. Print.

- - -. An Introduction to American Archaeology, Vol. 1, North and Middle

America. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966. Print.

- - -. An Introduction to American Archaeology, Vol. 2, South America.

Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1971. Print.

- - -. “The Virú Valley Settlement Pattern Study.” Archaeological

Researches in Retrospect. Cambridge: Winthrop Publishers,

1974. 149-176. Print.

- - -. Portraits in American Archaeology: Remembrances of Some

Distinguished Americanists. Albuquerque: University of New

Mexico Press, 1988. Print.

Willey, Gordon R., ed. Archaeological Researches in Retrospect.

Cambridge: Winthrop, 1974. Print.

Willey, Gordon R., and P. Phillips. Method and Theory in American

Archaeology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Print.

Willey, Gordon R., and Jeremy A. Sabloff. A History of American

Archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson, 1974. Print.