George Clapp Vaillant

After finishing his secondary education at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, he went to Harvard University where he received his bachelor's degree in 1922 and Ph.D. in 1927.

His position there was interrupted during the war when he became an Honorary Professor at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico in 1942, followed by a year in Peru where he served as the US State Department Cultural Relations Officer stationed in Lima (1943-1944).

His excavations at Zacatenco, Ticomán and El Arbollo established the framework for the Formative or Preclassic period in central Mexico.

Throughout his research of relating archaeology to the events and descriptions of colonial sources and Mexican traditions, Vaillant concentrated on problems of chronology and culture history.

Several decades later Christina Elson and other scholars at the American Museum of Natural History completed the study of artifacts from these sites and began a program to publish them.

George C. Vaillant (far left) was an associate curator at the American Museum of Natural History when this group photograph was taken with his colleagues (L-R) Harry L. Shapiro , Nels C. Nelson , and Clark Wissler . Margaret Bourke-White photo, 1937.