Leslie Spier was born on December 13, 1893 in New York City. His career in anthropology started in 1915 when he began his graduate studies at Columbia University under Franz Boas. From 1916 until he obtained his doctorate in 1920, Spier worked at the American Museum of Natural History, where he became interested in Native American cultures (Winters, p. 657).
Spier's field work with native cultures was mainly among tribes of the Northwest coast and those in the Southwest. He wrote his dissertation on the Sun Dance of the Plains Indians. His primary goal for this study was to establish its origins. However, after completing his study, he warned against broad generalizations. He wanted people to understand that they are merely attempts to derive too much information from too little data (Winters, p. 657).
Later in his career, Spier became discontented with archaeology and began to concentrate more on ethnography. However, he is still credited with having developed the basic principle of archaeological theory because of his study of Zuni prehistory. For this particular study, Spier combined several components of archaeological fieldwork-seriation, ranking and concurrent variation and stratigraphy. No one before him had combined all these elements, and by so doing, Spier brought new aspects to the field (Essays in Honor of Leslie Spier, p.v).
While Spier brought vast amounts of knowledge to the field of anthropology through his fieldwork, his greatest contributions were probably through his literary achievements and his students. In 1920, he began teaching at the University of Washington, where he established the entire Anthropology Department.
In 1939, he transferred to the University of New Mexico where he remained until he retired in 1955. Once there, he founded the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology and the University of New Mexico Publications in Anthropology. He edited both until his death in 1961. While Spier spent most of his tenure at these two universities, he also taught for several years at Yale University and visited many other academic institutions. In fact, it is estimated that Spier personally influenced approximately fifty percent of today's anthropologists (Winters, pp. 657-658).
Essays in Honor of Leslie Spier. London: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967. pp.v-ix.
Winters, Christopher. International Dictionary of Anthropologists. New York: Garland Publishing, 1991. pp. 657-658.
Written by students in an Introduction to Anthropology course at MSU-Mankato