[4] Under the guidance of Franz Boas, Aitken and John Alden Mason excavated Cerro Hueco (Antonio's Cueva), a cave in Puerto Rico, in 1915.

There, he and his assistant Kenneth Emory took passage aboard the interisland steamer Claudine to Maui for an archaeological survey of ruins in the Haleakalā Crater.

[6][7] Later that same year, he left Emory to continue the dig on Maui in order to join the Austral Islands team of the Bayard Dominick Expedition.

Though unbeknownst to his family back home, the secret collapsed shortly after his death some 58 years later, and his two descendant lines celebrated a joyous unification in 1980.

He managed to complete a master's degree at the University of Hawaiʻi in 1923 with his thesis “Mythology of Tubuai.”[10] His magnum opus, the Ethnology of Tubuai,[11] was published in 1930.