Edward Holland Spicer (1906–1983) was an American anthropologist who combined the four-field approach outlined by Franz Boas and trained in the structural-functional approach of Radcliffe-Brown and the University of Chicago. He joined the anthropology faculty at the University of Arizona in 1946 and retired from teaching in 1976. Spicer contributed to all four fields of anthropology through his study of the American Indians, the Southwest, and the clash of cultures defined in his award-winning book, Cycles of Conquest. Spicer combined the elements of historical, structural, and functional analysis to address the question of socio-cultural change. He was a teacher, researcher, editor, and practitioner, who applied his perspective to address the issues confronting the people he worked with.
Early life: growing up and education (1906–1924) Edward Holland Spicer was born on November 25, 1906, in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, the youngest of three children born to Robert Barclay Spicer and Margaret Jones Spicer. The Spicers' first son died several years before their second son, William, known as Bill, was born. Edward, known as Ned, was born several years later.
In 1908, Robert, who was a Quaker, moved his family to Arden, Delaware, where he took a job as editor of the Quaker journal, The Friends Intelligencia. Arden was founded in 1900 by a Quaker group as a single tax community based on the principle of Henry George; there, Ned and Bill were exposed to the liberal economic and political ideas of the community. They participated in the local Shakespearean Theater every summer. Arden provided a pleasant rural setting in which the boys absorbed the intellectual atmosphere of the town.
Robert was fired from his editor's post because of his extreme liberal views. As a result, he turned to truck farming which introduced Bill and Ned to farming life. They helped with the daily raking and hoeing of the plants and vegetables. They tended to the animals of the farm, including goats and rabbits, and helped the household out by hauling firewood for the house and water from the town pump.
In keeping with the local practice, Margaret homeschooled the boys. The mothers in the community took in their neighbors' children for schooling in their homes for a month at a time, each month switching off with another mother. During this period, he learned to read and developed a lifelong love for books and writing. From his father, Ned learned about philology. By the time he was 12, he was copying words and texts of the Algonquin (Delaware) language. Ned displayed interest and curiosity in nature and the environment in and around Arden. He spent time learning and memorizing the scientific names of local plants and animals. Ned was homeschooled until he was 13.
Ned began his formal education when he was 13 years old. His parents enrolled Ned in the Friends School in nearby Wilmington. Ned commuted from home to the school by train daily for the next 3 years. His formal education continued in 1922 when his father moved the family to Louisville, Kentucky, after Robert took a job with the Society for the Prevention of Tuberculosis. Ned was enrolled at the Louisville Male High School.
While in Louisville, Ned developed an interest in sailing. He built a canoe and outfitted it with a sail, which he sailed and cruised in around the Ohio River. In February 1924, Ned graduated, left home, and enrolled in the Commonwealth College in New Llano, Louisiana. Commonwealth College was an experimental institution that featured classical and experiential training.
Wandering: A period of exploration (1924–1932) After 2 months, Ned and his friend Vic dropped out and went to New Orleans to find work as seamen. Vic found a job on a merchant ship and left Ned on his own until he found a job as a "cook's helper" on the Aquarius, a merchant ship sailing to Germany. Ned's first international travel brought him to post-war Germany where he visited Bremerhaven, Stettin and Hamburg(Officer 1990:327) where he witnessed a different world. Upon returning to Louisville he found his father Robert dying of cancer.
Following his father's death, he and his mother returned to Wilmington, where they found employment at the Greenwood Bookstore. Louisville had been a mixed period in Ned's life: while he enjoyed his experiences on the river and building of the boat,(Officer 1995: 327) it was also a period of mixed emotions, introspection and self-doubt common to teenage boys.(RS: 1990:5–6) Ned turned 18 in November and continued to work at the bookstore until he found himself drawn back to the sea.
In early 1925, Ned returned to the sea, first as a crewman on the banana boat, Metapan, that left New Orleans for Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. According to his wife, Rosamond, that experience ended Ned's interest in eating bananas.(RS 1988: xxiv) Upon return he signed on to the ore ship, John C. Coolidge, on the Great Lakes.(RS 1990: 8 ) A seaman's strike later that year ended Ned's career as a seaman.
In the fall of 1925, Ned enrolled at the University of Delaware and planned to major in chemistry. He had enjoyed the chemistry classes in Louisville and thought of a career as a chemist with Dupont, there in Wilmington. He changed majors to literature and drama, which Ned's mother had encouraged her son to explore after he found the chemistry being taught at the university was not what he expected.(Officer 1995: ) During his time at the university, Ned joined the Footlight Club and acted in several plays. He joined the compulsory ROTC program, despite his Quaker upbringing, and rose to the rank of cadet Captain. He also studied German during his two years there.(RS 1990: 8)
While at the University of Delaware, he wrote a paper entitled "Is there Race Superiority?" that awakened an interest in the social sciences.(RS 1990:8) One of the courses he took was in economics.(Officer 1995:327) As a child, Ned and his brother, Bill, were raised in a socialist environment.(RS 1990: 4–5) He would later remark, "In my youth I had been strongly influenced ... by Scott Nearing, the radical economists at the Wharton School ... who was a friend of my father.".(Officer 1990:33)
During his sophomore year he heard about a new program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a Quaker institution. As part of the new program undergraduates were allowed to take graduate level courses before they had received their bachelor's degree.(Officer 1995:327) In the fall of 1927, Ned transferred to Johns Hopkins and switched to a social science major.
While in Baltimore, he lived with two maiden aunts, sisters to his father.(RS 1990: 8) He chose to take some of his social science courses at the graduate level. He found the liberal environment at Johns Hopkins welcoming and helped found a student club, The Young Radicals, where he served as president of the club that brought together students who had socialist leanings. He contributed the paper, "Theory of Hours and Production" to a graduate level seminar based on his experience during the seamen's strike.
At this time was also a period of introspection where he questioned his choices and goals, often expressing himself through poetry.(RS 1990:9) In his second year at Johns Hopkins, he became disinterested in political economics.(RS 1990:9) Despite a full scholarship, Ned dropped out of college in 1928 without completing his degree. Shortly thereafter he was diagnosed with symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis, spending most of the year at the Maryland State Sanatorium.
While in the sanatorium, he worked in the hospital laboratory doing sputum analysis for all the patients of the sanatorium. He developed an interest in astronomy and spent nights in August and November charting meteor showers and sending his observations to the National Observatory in Washington, DC.(RS 1990:9) Years later he would have an asteroid ("2065 Spicer") named after him for his help in 1955 negotiations between the Tohono O'odham Nation and the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in acquiring land for the Kitt Peak National Observatory on the reservation.(Officer 1990:340)
Ned left the hospital in 1928 and questioned what to do next. Opening a map of the US and closing his eyes, Ned stuck his finger on the map, where it landed on Arizona.(R. Spicer 1990: 10)
With help from his mother, he bought a bus ticket to Phoenix, where he found a number of jobs to support himself and a place to stay. Ned obtained a position with the Arizona Agricultural Inspection Service serving as an inspector in Yuma and in Salome, Arizona. Despite a diagnosis of "smallpox" which might have been "valley fever", he was able to continue his job, though he was quarantined at the Yuma Pest House. Meanwhile, he had decided to complete his BA in economics and saved money to go the University of Arizona. During the Great Depression the bank where he had placed his savings failed, and the job would be a lifesaver despite the crash postponing his plans for a year. By the end of 1930, he had saved up enough to enroll at the University of Arizona.
Studying: University training (1931–1946) In the fall of 1931, he enrolled at the University of Arizona and moved to Tucson. He learned that in order to complete his major in economics, only one advanced course in economic theory was needed. He completed his undergraduate course requirements and earned his BA degree with a major in Economics and Senior Honors.(Officer 1995: 329)
While completing his BA course work, he enrolled in a course on southwestern Indians with Clara Lee Frapps (née Tanner). Dr. Dean Byron Cummings headed the Department of Archaeology at the university at the time and invited Ned to go with him on explorations for sites on weekends. These trips reinforced Ned's interest and skills in archaeology. He collected pot shards on these trips and brought them home to be sorted, cataloged, and analyzed, skills that would lay the foundation for his master's degree.(R. Spicer 1990:11) In the summer of 1932, Ned worked on the King's Ruin site and wrote his MA thesis on King's Ruin, analyzing the pottery specimens from the site. He found that the "black on gray" motif was similar to other material found in the Upper Verde Valley. However, there was enough difference to identify them as a sub-class that he named Prescott black on gray. Ned worked on the Apache Reservation at the Kinishba site later that year.(R. Spicer 1990:11)
During the 1932–33 school year, an opportunity developed to excavate at the Tuzigoot ruins. The Great Depression caused many miners to be let go by the United Verde Copper Company, a major employer in Yavapai County. To offset the resulting unemployment, Grace Sparkes, Chamber of Commerce secretary, envisioned excavation of ruins at Tuzigoot in Clarkdale, near Prescott, AZ.(R. Spicer 1990: 11)
Ned and Louis R. Caywood were hired for under the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (CWA), later known as the WPA. They organized the project with Ned as the dig's supervisor and Louis in charge of the lab. Ned's mother came out to help with the kitchen and housekeeping. Harry Getty later joined to help supervise the project. The project and partial reconstruction of the site was completed in 10 months, paving the way for the Tuzigoot National Monument.(R. Spicer 1990:11)
When the Tuzigoot excavation was finished, Ned began working at the Museum of Northern Arizona. He collaborated with Drs. Harold S. Colton and Lyndon Lane Hargrave analyzing artifacts from Pueblo I pithouses in the San Francisco Mountains. In May 1933, Ned gave his first formal report on the pottery of the site at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Las Cruces, New Mexico (Watson Smith 1983: 76). At the time, Ned was deeply interested in an archaeological career, but not a Ph.D.