Papers of Evon Zartman Vogt

Evon Zartman Vogt, Jr. was professor of social anthropology at Harvard from 1948 to 1989 and curator of Middle American ethnology at the Peabody Museum from 1960 to 1989. Vogt was born in Gallup, New Mexico on August 20, 1918 and grew up on a sheep ranch near the Navajo (Diné) and Zuni (A:shiwi) communities that he would later study as an anthropologist. He attended the University of Chicago, where he received his A.B. in geography (1941) and his M.A. (1946) and Ph.D. (1948) in anthropology. On September 4, 1941, Vogt married Catherine Christine Hiller (“Nan”), who was involved in Vogt’s research throughout his career, performing fieldwork, attending professional organization meetings, and publishing with her husband. Vogt's studies were interrupted by World War II, when he served in the United States Navy (1942-1945) as an air combat intelligence officer aboard a carrier in the Pacific, returning to his graduate studies in January 1946. Research for his doctorate took him back to New Mexico and resulted in his dissertation, "Navaho Veterans: A Study of Acculturation". He was encouraged to study Navajo veterans by his relative, Clyde Kluckhohn, an anthropologist who had been studying the Ramah Navajo for years. Vogt and Kluckhohn with sociologist Florence Kluckhohn and anthropologist John M. Roberts later co-directed the Ramah Project, or “The Comparative Study of Values in Five Cultures”, an ethnographic study of cultural groups in Ramah, New Mexico including Navajo (Diné), Zuni (A:shiwi), Hispanic-American, Mormon, and Texas homesteaders.

Vogt began teaching at Harvard in 1948, becoming assistant professor of social anthropology in 1950, associate professor in 1955, and professor in 1959, when he also became curator of Middle American ethnology at the Peabody Museum. He taught courses on tribal religions, cultural evolution, Native American ethnology, and other topics in social anthropology. His major research and anthropological interests were centered on the ethnology of indigenous communities of the Southwestern United States and Mexico, including the Navajo (Diné), Zuni (A:shiwi), and Tzotzil Maya; processes of social and cultural change among the Maya of Chiapas; and religion, including structural analysis of ritual and mythological symbolism. He was also interested in ancient Maya concepts in contemporary Maya religion.

Vogt's major work as an anthropologist was the Harvard Chiapas Project, which he started in the summer of 1957. This was a major anthropological effort to explore socio-cultural change in the highlands of Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. The project focused on the three municipios of Zinacantan, Chamula, and Huistan, near the Ladino town of San Cristobal las Casas, a political and market center. It was the first intensive description of Tzotzil Maya culture in the highlands of Chiapas, and Vogt found that the Tzotzil Maya people still have a vital, traditional Maya culture, overlaid by a veneer of Spanish Catholicism. Their settlement patterns consist of a ceremonial center with outlying hamlets in a sustaining area, a traditional Maya arrangement. The Tzotzil Maya are small-scale agriculturalists, corn farmers whose lives revolve around the yearly cycle of maize. Vogt was assisted in his research by over a hundred undergraduate and graduate students, who produced scores of papers and reports and several dissertations on their work. Students lived with Zinacanteco families, worked alongside them, attended rites and ceremonies, and spoke Tzotzil. The Harvard Chiapas Project was one of the major research efforts of twentieth century anthropology, and it culminated in Vogt's ethnographic monograph, Zinacantan: A Maya Community in the Highlands of Chiapas. His research transformed the field of Maya ethnography and contributed to new understandings about how communities change over time while conserving and maintaining traditions.

Vogt was active in Harvard administration and professional organizations. He became head of the anthropology wing of the Harvard Department of Social Relations in 1960 and was chair of the Department of Anthropology from 1969 to 1973. He and his wife Nan were co-masters of Kirkland House from 1974 to 1982. Vogt was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960, the National Academy of Sciences in 1979, and the American Philosophical Society in 1999. He was also a member of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. He was also a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1956-1957), and a member of the Board of Directors of the Columbia-Cornell-Harvard-Illinois Summer Field Studies Program. He was decorated in Mexico with the Aguila Azteca, Order of the Aztec Eagle, in 1978. Vogt died on May 13, 2004.