Culture of the Ancient Pueblos of the Upper Gila River Region, New Mexico and Arizona

The National Museum in Washington D.C. (part of the Smithsonian museums) began in 1875 to issue "Bulletins" that consisted of a series of separate publications comprising chiefly monographs of large zoological groups and other general systematic treatises, faunal work, reports of expeditions, etc. This present book forms No. 87 of the Second Museum – Gates Expedition, conducted in 1905 along the San Fransico River on the Arizona – New Mexico border.

Condition: Blue teal cloth hardbound boards with debossed gold gilt emblem on the front cover and debossed plain emblem on rear, with gold gilt stamped border to front board. Red text block on the spine includes title, subtitle, and author in gold gilt. The spine back strip has slight wear at the top. Boards show no wear but there is cosmetic spotting/discoloration, more extensive on the rear board. All corners are sharp but have slight wear at the tips. Spine is straight with no cracking at the beautiful marbled endpapers, hinges are strong. Overall text block is solid with all pages firmly attached with gold gilt along the top edge and deckled pages to the front. Age tanning throughout with some darkening along the page edges. Previous owner inscription on first blank page. Interior pages are clean with no tears, cracks, or other previous owner marks. Illustrated with twenty-nine black and white glossy plates and 348 full page and in-text figures.

Walter Hough (1859 – 1935) was an American ethnologist who worked for the Smithsonian Institution beginning as an assistant (1886 – 1894), then assistant curator of ethnology (1896 – 1910) and as curator from 1910 until his death in 1935. Hough's work primarily revolved around cataloging the museum's collections, he also spent time doing archaeological field work in the American Southwest. During the 1905 expedition, Hough unearthed preserved cobs of maize in a cave in New Mexico that helped subsequent archaeologist determine that the Mogollon ethnic group inhabited the area before the Anasazi Puebloans, who were previously considered to be the area's earliest inhabitants.