author
Marshall H. (Marshall Howard) Saville
1867–1935
An early American archaeologist whose work helped bring the ancient cultures of Mexico and Ecuador to wider attention. He combined field expeditions, museum leadership, and scholarly writing in a career that linked discovery with public education.
1 Audiobook
Turquois mosaic art in ancient Mexico
by Marshall H. (Marshall Howard) Saville
About the author
Born in Rockport, Massachusetts, in 1867, he studied at Columbia and then worked with Frederic W. Putnam at Harvard’s Peabody Museum, where he took part in field research and early archaeological work in Ohio. He went on to build a reputation as a specialist in the archaeology of Mexico and surrounding regions.
He later became professor of American archaeology at Columbia University and served as director of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, in New York. His expeditions and publications focused especially on Mesoamerica and Ecuador, and he helped shape museum collections that were important to the study of Indigenous art and archaeology in the Americas.
Remembered as both a field archaeologist and a museum scholar, he published widely and played a visible role in American anthropology during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He died in 1935, leaving behind a body of work still associated with the early institutional history of archaeology in the Americas.