Ann Axtell Morris: Archaeologist

Ann Axtell Morris, born Feb. 9, 1900, was a pioneering female archaeologist who studied the indigenous American Southwest and the Yucatan in Mexico. At age six, Ann Axtell was asked what she wanted to do when she grew up. She replied, “to dig for buried treasure, explore among the Indians, paint pictures, wear a gun, and go to college.” Little did she know that she was describing the life of an archaeologist. Twenty years later, Morris broke barriers to be one of the first women archaeologists, in a field well-known as a “boys’ club.”

Ann’s fascination with ancient history began in childhood. At Smith College, where she majored in history, she was dissatisfied that there weren’t more classes on early civilizations and ancient cultures.“Not until one of my harassed professors remarked wearily that what I probably wanted was archaeology and not history, did the light dawn,” she wrote. After graduating from Smith in 1922, Axtell applied to the American School of Prehistoric Archaeology in France to train as an archaeologist. There, she learned techniques for working in the field. Her career goal was to research and excavate one of the richest archaeological areas of the American Southwest, the Four Corners, where four states come together: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.

A year later in 1923, degree in hand, Axtell returned to the United States and married Earl Morris, the archaeologist said to have inspired the character of Indiana Jones. Twelve years older, Morris was already well regarded. He had excavated a Mayan site in Guatemala and restored the Aztec Ruins, a Pueblo site in New Mexico, for the American Museum of Natural History. Despite the age difference, he was taken by Axtell’s brains and beauty. In a 1921 letter to her family, Axtell said Morris would have hired her to oversee a dig, but his sponsors would never accept a woman. “Needless to say,” she wrote, “my teeth are much furrowed from much grinding.” They were in love with each other and their work. Their honeymoon was spent excavating remains in the unromantically named Mummy Cave, located in Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona. They were the first to unearth mummified corpses and evidence of a thousand years of a highly advanced civilization, debunking the belief that the Anasazi were nomadic hunter-gatherers.

In the 1920s, American archaeology was in its prime and discoveries of ruins and relics fired the public’s imagination. But while there was huge interest in exploring the past, archaeology field work remained mostly off limits to women. Determined to get in on the action no matter what it took, Axtell Morris dressed in gaiters, men’s pants and boots and never flinched or complained about the rough camp conditions. Despite her efforts, in 1924, when Axtell Morris arrived with her husband for an important dig in Chichen Itza, Yucatan, she wasn’t given a shovel and tools. Instead, the archaeologist in charge, Sylvanus Morley, expected her to babysit his children and serve as a hostess on the project. She ultimately convinced Morley to let her excavate an overlooked site, which led to ground-breaking discoveries about the Mayans. Every winter for the next five years, the couple returned to continue working on the site. As her husband restored the walls, Axtell Morris copied and reproduced the murals with astounding accuracy and detail. She added color to her line drawings, something that had not been done before in archaeological renderings. The results of their efforts would become a two-volume book, Temple of Warriors at Chichen Itza, Yucatan, co-authored by the Morrises and French painter, Jean Charlot.

The couple also spent more than a decade documenting areas that are now part of the national parks: Mesa Verde, the Aztec Ruins National Monument as well as Canyon de Chelly. At Massacre Cave in Canyon del Muerto in New Mexico, they were the first people to uncover the remains of Navajos who had been killed in a violent attack by Spanish conquistadors. The Navajos had discouraged the couple from going there calling it, “The Canyon of the Dead Man,” a cursed place. One of the ways that Axtell Morris’ brought indigenous cultures to life was creating large scale watercolors illustrating the ruins, pictographs, tools, people and landscapes of the region. In the traditional archaeological world, this was revolutionary. Her works of art were so captivating that she received commissions for specific sites. Her painting of the Canyon’s iconic Antelope House was displayed at a New York City museum. The National Park Service used her art to create new standards and methods for pictorial documentation. She helped Earl Morris write his technical reports and compiled her own notes and drawings into two books, “Digging in the Yucatan,” and “Digging in the Southwest.” These were sold as children’s books because the publishers did not think an archaeological work by a woman would sell.

Although the parts of her writing reflected the bias of her time toward indigenous culture, the work that Axtell Morris and Morris did in the Southwest helped make the case for preservation versus looting of cultural sites and helped the designation of many of these areas as national parks. She also wrote with passion about the essence of her role, saying that the three most important tools for an archaeologist were “a spade, the human eye and imagination, with “imagination being the most important of all and the most easily abused.” Ironically, as she worked to bring the artifacts and dead cultures to life, her own contributions were often overlooked or buried in papers where her husbandreceived the credit.

In 1932, the Morrises settled in Boulder and the first of two daughters was born. But the transition to a traditional family took its toll and Axtell Morris reportedly became depressed, an alcoholic and a diabetic. By 40, she was also a recluse, rarely emerging from her bedroom. Axtell Morris died at 45. Some say her early death was because she had disturbed sacred Navajo sites such as the one at Canyon del Muerto.

In a life full of societal and professional limitations, Axtell Morris was a trailblazer. Her determination to follow her passion in the field of her dreams made her an inspiration to all women archaeologists who came after.

©2023 Alice Look
Co-founder, Remarkable Women Project.org
Executive Producer, Remarkable Women Project