ADAMS, E. Charles 1947-

PERSONAL:

Born November 27, 1947, in Denver, CO; son of Ethan S. (a small business owner) and Mary L. (a small business owner) Adams; married May 26, 1973; wife's name Jenny L. (marriage ended April 30, 2001); children: Nathaniel E. Ethnicity: "Mixed European." Education: University of Colorado, Boulder, B.A., 1970, M.A., 1973, Ph.D., 1975. Politics: Liberal Democrat. Religion: "Liberal Protestant." Hobbies and other interests: Hiking, travel.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Tucson, AZ. Office—Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, P.O. Box 210026, Tucson, AZ 85721-0026. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, senior archaeologist, 1975-82; Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez, CO, research director, 1983-85; University of Arizona, Tucson, curator of archaeology at Arizona State Museum, 1985—, and professor of anthropology. Member of Arizona Governor's Archaeology Advisory Commission. Military service: Army National Guard, 1966-72.

MEMBER:

Society for American Archaeology, American Anthropological Association, Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society, Arizona Archaeological Society, Sigma Xi.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Victor Stoner Award, Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society, 1994; Award in Public Archaeology, Arizona Archaeological Advisory Commission, 1999.

WRITINGS:

The Origin and Development of the Pueblo Katsina Cult, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1991.

(Editor, with Kelley Ann Hays, and contributor) Homol'ovi II: Archaeology of an Ancestral Hopi Village, Arizona, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1991.

(Editor and contributor) River of Change: Prehistory of the Middle Little Colorado River Valley, Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1996.

(Editor and contributor) Homol'ovi III: A Pueblo Hamlet in the Middle Little Colorado River Valley, Northeastern Arizona, Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 2001.

Homol'ovi: An Ancient Hopi Settlement Cluster, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 2002.

(Editor, with Andrew I. Duff) The Protohistoric Pueblo World, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 2004.

(Editor and contributor) Homol'ovi IV: The First Village (electronic document), Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 2004.

Contributor to books, including Hopi Kachina: Spirit of Life, edited by Dorothy K. Washburn, University of Washington Press (Seattle, WA), 1980; Archaeology of the Spanish Borderlands: The Greater American Southwest, edited by David Hurst Thomas, Smithsonian Institution Press (Washington, DC), 1989; The Archaeology of Regional Interaction: Religion, Warfare, and Exchange across the American Southwest and Beyond, edited by Michelle Hegmon, University Press of Colorado, 2000; The Protohistoric Pueblo World, A.D. 1275-1600, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 2004; and Religious Movements in the Prehispanic Southwest, edited by Christian S. VanPool and Todd VanPool, AltaMira Press, in press. Contributor to professional journals, including Southwestern Lore, Journal of Ethnobiology, Pottery Southwest, American Antiquity, Journal of Field Archaeology, Journal of the Southwest, and Kiva.

SIDELIGHTS:

E. Charles Adams told CA: "I see myself as primarily a storyteller, but using a lot of scientific information to back up my story. As an archaeologist working with ancestral Hopi archaeological materials for thirty years, it is my goal to learn as much as I can from my excavations in order to best tell the story of the people who made the artifacts, structures, and villages I investigate. The story can only be an approximation of the true story, because I only have a small proportion of the material that was used by the people to enhance their lives. I am blessed by the fact that the descendents of the ancestral Hopi villages I investigate live only sixty miles north and are keenly interested and involved in my research. The modern Hopi have their own stories of these places. Sometimes we are at odds in our stories, but more often than not we have a common ground.

"I am motivated by a professional obligation to publish that which I excavate and study. But my motivation runs much deeper. I feel a sense of place and a connection to the ancient villages I explore. Hundreds of people lived and prospered in these places, often for several generations. I want to help them tell their story in more detail than the Hopi stories of these people. I also enjoy training and teaching students about archaeology and the history of these places and working with the hundreds of volunteers who have worked on my projects over the last twenty-five years. I believe it is the obligation of archaeologists to engage the public who support their research.

"I am strongly influenced by Hopi stories written by Hopi and non-Hopi. I am inspired by those archaeologists and anthropologists who have bridged the gap between scientific publications and those intended for the general public. I write by first compiling all of the scientific data that I have created through work with graduate students, volunteers, and other professionals. I look for patterns in these data that give me a thread of an idea about the time and space parameters of the community I am studying. I then look at the details of living presented in the archaeological material. All of these threads are drawn together to tell the story of life in a Hopi village during the 1300s or, perhaps, earlier or later. These villages held hundreds to a thousand people and were important places. There is information we have collected as archaeologists that tells the story of the people who once lived there: their social relations, religion, political structure, relations with nearby communities, why they settled in this place and why they left.

"Having lived with the Hopi for eighteen months in the 1970s, I developed enormous respect for the people, their culture, and their way of life. I learned from them the stories of this land and of their ancestors. When I work in these places now, I remember how they must have looked 650 years ago, because I was privileged to have lived in a village in the 1970s that looks very similar."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Antiquity, January, 2004, David Wilcox, review of Homol'ovi: An Ancient Hopi Settlement Cluster, p. 161; April, 2004, Steve LeBlanc, review of Homol'ovi, p. 375.