All Interviews Watson Smith
Part 1 of a March 1975 audio interview with Watson Smith (1897-1993) conducted by J. Jefferson Reid. Historic photos and video have been added to enrich the narrative. Watson talks about his education, his early start in archaeology in Greece, then with Paul Martin in SW Colorado, Alkalai Ridge in Utah, and excavation and research in the Rainbow Bridge area working at The Rainbow Bridge Monument Valley Expedition, doing research and teaching younger men about fieldwork in anthropology and archaeology along with other natural sciences.
Watson Smith matriculated in 1915 at Brown University and graduated there in 1919 with a bachelor’s degree after a brief interruption for military service in WW I. After working for some time, he entered Harvard Law School and graduated there in 1924. He then worked for a law firm in Providence, Rhode Island until 1930, when his parents died. From 1930 to 1933 he worked on settling his parents’ estates and by inheritance became independently wealthy.
In the summer of 1933 he did archaeological field work at Colorado’s Lowry Pueblo with Paul Sidney Martin of the Field Museum of Natural History. After studying law, anthropology, and history during the winter of 1934–1935 under the direction of Max Radin at the University of California, Berkeley, Smith became committed to a career in archaeology. In the spring of 1935 he joined Ansel Hall‘s Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition in the Kayenta area and also spent the early summers of 1936 and 1937 as a member of the Expedition. During this time, Smith met George Walter Brainerd, Edward Twitchell Hall, and John Beach Rinaldo. In the autumn of 1935, Lyndon Lane Hargrave invited Smith to work at the Museum of Northern Arizona with him and Harold Sellers Colton in the preparation of the Handbook of Northern Arizona Pottery Types, which was published in 1937.
Smith was affiliated with MNA for five decades, beginning in the 1930s when he was a crew member of the Rainbow Bridge/Monument Valley Expedition sponsored by the National Park Service. MNA assistant director Lyndon Hargrave was the archeologist for the project.
“Wat” was also involved with the first excavation of Awatovi Pueblo near the Hopi mesas in the 1930s to which the Colton’s and Katharine Bartlett visited. Wat became an MNA Research Associate and was also a long-time member of the Board of Trustees. He was chosen as MNA Trustee of the Year in 1977. His extensive collection of southwestern archaeology research including film reels, sound recording, photographs, and field notes are part of the MNA archives.