Oblique Views: Aerial Photography and Southwest Archaeology

In 1927, the year that Charles A. Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic Ocean, another revolution was happening on the ground. A group of young archaeologists was forging an area of study centered on the ancient Southwest. Aviation and archaeology merged when Alfred V. Kidder, of the Carnegie Institution, hired Lindbergh to photograph the sites from an airplane. Lindbergh’s aerial survey of the Four Corners and Upper Rio Grande, made with Anne Morrow Lindbergh at the controls and, possibly, photog...