'John Alden Mason' (
January 14,
1885 –
November 7,
1967) was an archaeological
anthropologist and
linguist.
Mason was born in Orland,
Indiana, but grew up in
Philadelphia's
Germantown. He received his undergraduate degree from the
University of Pennsylvania in 1907 and a doctorate from the
University of California, Berkeley in 1911. His dissertation was an ethnographic study of the
Salinian Amerindian ethnic group of
California. He also authored a number of linguistic studies, including a study of
Piman languages. His later ethnographic works included studies of the
Tepehuan.
Mason was curator of the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania from 1926 until his retirement in 1958.
His papers are housed at the
American Philosophical Society in
Philadelphia.
Sources
★
American Philosophical Society
★
Project Muse
★ "Descendants of Capt. Hugh Mason in America", by Edna W. Mason, 1937
★ "Who Was Who in America", Vol. 10