Spouse(s) Vearl Ferdon | Children 3 | |
Born June 14, 1913 ( 1913-06-14 ) St. Paul, Minnesota Died 13 November 2002, Tucson, Arizona, United States | ||
Edwin Ferdon (June 14, 1913 – November 13, 2002) was an American ethnologist noted for his studies of the people of the Americas and Polynesia.
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Early life
Edwin Nelson Ferdon Jr. was born on June 14, 1913 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He had 2 sisters and a brother. Ferdon's family moved to Coshocton, Ohio, where he attended high school. While in Ohio, he also participated in Boy Scouts of America and became an Eagle Scout.
He attended the University of Minnesota and graduated in 1937. While in school, he went to do field work in Peru and Bolivia in 1935, and later went to Mexico in 1936 and again in 1937. Ferdon's brother John Ferdon was killed at age 17 due to a radio that fell into the bath water in 1936 while Ferdon was away in Mexico City.
Career
After graduation, he worked for the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe, New Mexico as a curator until 1938. He left that job in order to do fieldwork in Ecuador for three years where he conducted archaeological surveys. He went on to attend the University of California to obtain a master's degree.
In 1955, Thor Heyerdahl asked Ferdon to go on an expedition to Easter Island as an archaeologist. Ferdon was only one of four archaeologists that went on the expedition. While in Eastern Polynesia, Ferdon studied the walking rituals and the details of modern life in Tahiti. Ferdon also took many photographs to document the expedition. He published many books and articles on his studies. Ferdon worked for the Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona and retired in 1983, after serving as associate director. During his career as an anthropologist and archaeologist, he was also the director of the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe.
Ferdon died on November 13, 2002 due to cancer. He is buried at the East Lawn Cemetery in Tucson, Arizona.