Marion
Stirling
Pugh
1911-2001
Helped conduct
expeditions
that reshaped
understanding
of Mesoamerican
history
Marion Stirling (left) and her
husband, Matthew, excavated
pieces that rewrote Meso-
american history during their
expeditions to Mexico in
the 1930s and ’40s. Here she
applies a coat of varnish to
protect an ancient skull
from crumbling.
RICHARD H. STEWART
On their way to break the
record for transcontinental
flight, Anne Morrow
Lindbergh and her husband,
Charles (above), pose at
a California airfield in 1930.
The newlyweds took off and
landed in New York 14 hours,
23 minutes, 32 seconds later.
BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGESIn a photograph taken
during an expedition
to Panama in 1948,
Marion Stirling gazes
at a recently discov-
ered necklace made of
some 800 human teeth.
Her life had certainly
changed since 1931,
when she took a job
in Washington, D.C., as
secretary for Matthew
Stirling, director of the
Smithsonian’s Bureau of
American Ethnology.
Marion and Matthew
were married a few
years later, and Marion
began taking night
classes in anthropology
and geology. In 1938,
while on a family trip
to Mexico, Matthew,
who would come to be
known in the industry
as “the golden shovel,”
went to see a giant
stone sculpture that
explorers had found
decades earlier. It was a
colossal Olmec head.
Matthew obtained
funding from the
Smithsonian Institu-
tion and National Geo-
graphic to excavate the
area. On more than a
dozen expeditions to
southern Mexico (Mar-
ion missed one to give
birth to their daugh-
ter), the pair essentially
rewrote Mesoamerican
history. They unearthed
stone heads and
other remnants of the
ancient Olmec Empire,
determining it was
likely the region’s first
great civilization.Marion supervised
the scorpion-infested
camp, and she cleaned
and cataloged their
findings. She co-
authored many papers
with Matthew and, in
1939, calculated that a
calendar carved into
an Olmec monument
referred to the year(^31) B.C., making it the
oldest date recorded
in the New World at
the time.
The Stirlings later
discovered pre-
Columbian jade in
Mexico, granite spheres
in Costa Rica, and
mounds built at Pana-
manian village sites.
Marion, who married
again after Matthew’s
death, served twice
as the president of
the Society of Woman
Geographers. In 1975
she was awarded its
gold medal for pioneer-
ing contributions to
archaeology in Mexico
and Central America.
130 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC