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Richard Stockton
"Scotty" MacNeish
Scotty at the 1998 Chicago SAA's visiting with my good friends Jim Strait and Ryan Peterson. Scotty was great at the conferences, whenever anyone would walk up to the table to introduce themselves he always made them welcome and freely engage them in conversation. Scotty loved to talk and was always a wealth of interesting information.
From the Shovelbums archive: On Tuesday of this week Dr. Richard Stockton "Scotty" MacNeish died in a hospital in Belize City from complications resulting from an auto accident. Scotty had been driving between the sites of Lamanai and Caracol. Scotty was driving fast, as was his typical pace, and the car lost control on some loose gravel. Fortunately British troops were nearby and were able to get Scotty and his traveling companion, long time friend and editor Jane Libby, removed from the wreckage and off to the hospital. Jane tells me that the driver happened to be an archaeologist and that Scotty talked shop with him all the way to the hospital. Sadly, four hours later, Scotty passed away due to complications from the accident. Everyone I have talked to so far has agreed, with the exception of actually being able to die on an archaeology site, this is the way Scotty would have wanted it: Away in the rainforest, between visiting two great sites, talking shop, and reflecting on the cold Belikin beers he had the night before. About the only thing different about this I could imagine is that he would have preferred a bit more sporty of a car than a rental. Scotty's body will be cremated in Belize and flown to his home in Andover Massachusetts. A bit about Scotty. Scotty, as one friend put it best, was a hell of a character. I have even had the pleasure to have worked with Scotty's original crew boss, Roger Willis, who supervised Scotty during the WPA days at the Kincaid site in Illinois when Scotty was a young buck at Chicago. Even then Roger tells me, Scotty was quite the character having been a golden gloves champion in his youth, and heavily into listening to the blues on the south side of Chicago. But what most of us remember Scotty for is his pioneering work on the origins of corn in Mexico in the 1950's. There is however plenty of information about Scotty on the web for which I have added a few links below. So I would just like to say a few words myself. The bottom line about Scotty was he was a good man. He was known as many things: a story teller, an agitator, a flirt, a lover of good bourbon and Bohemia beer, a man who had the most important trait a archaeologists can hope for, passion for his profession. It does not matter if you agree with all of his interpretations of his research - disagreement is the nature of our profession. What matters is that Scotty was a good person. And yes you will hear your bosses and professors tell stories about Scotty - some wilder and harder to believe than others, but unless they are first hand stories - and so few of them are it seems, take them with a grain of salt. I am sure though that Scotty regrets not having got to meet each of you personally - as that was one of his true loves was, meeting younger archaeologists and telling them stories about the old days. I was never at a conference where Scotty and I crossed paths that he did not make the time to take the groups I was with to the bar to regale them with first hand stories of field work throughout the century. At the age of 82, and after nearly 6,000 days in the field - Scotty has become part of what he had always loved, the archaeological record. So folks, the only thing I ask of you all is the next time you are in the bar with your archaeology buddies or taking lunch in the field, have a moment of silence among yourselves - reflect on the fact that this man born in 1918 who died in 2001... was still doing archaeology, then make a toast. Scotty would have liked that. There are several articles about Scotty online at By Bill Brown - http://www.discoveringarchaeology.com/0599toc/5profile1-macneish.shtml and from http://emuseum.mnsu.edu/information/biography/klmno/macneish_richard.html (text below) Richard Stockton MacNeish As Director of the Robert S. Peabody Foundation for Archaeology in Andover, Massachusetts, Dr. MacNeish has contributed to the art of gathering and printing archaeological information. He was and is known as Scotty by his colleagues and friends. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1949. According to Dr. MacNeish, in his forty year career as an archaeologist, he has spent 5,683 days digging in the field. The most well renowned of his numerous books and 170 plus articles are his five volumes of writings on the findings in the Valley of Mexico. These findings were on the prehistory of the Tehuacan Valley in south-central Mexico. Many archaeological awards and medals have been bestowed upon Dr. MacNeish, no doubt as a result of his dedication to the field. He was the recipient of the Kidder Award. This award meant a great deal to MacNeish for he and Mr. Kidder were close personnel friends before Kidder passed away. He also received the Verrill and Drexel Medals from Pennsylvania and Yale Universities, respectively. He received the Cornplanter and Spinden Medals and in 1974, McMaster University selected him to be the Whidden Lecturer. Along with his many fine works in both anthropology and archaeology, he also was quite a boxer in his younger years in New York. Richard Stockton MacNeish was the Golden Glove Boxing Champion of Binghamton in 1938. He will continue to help and teach the people of today with the dedication he fought so earnestly for throughout his entire life. MacNeish was a New World archaeologist whose primary focus was the transition from hunting/gathering subsistence base to sedentary, agriculture based culture in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico. MacNeish found that the primary agricultural species in the Tehuacan Valley was corn which had been domesticated before 3000 B.C.
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