Tozzer Library

Overview

The Tozzer Library collects in all subfields of anthropology, with a special emphasis on materials relating to the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

The library's large collection of primary source materials in Mesoamerican archaeology, ethnology, and linguistics includes Mayan language materials, Spanish Colonial documents, ethnographic and archaeological field notes, and unpublished scholarly manuscripts from researchers at Harvard and other institutions.

Among the most notable of the Mesoamerican materials are those in the Bowditch-Gates Collection, which contains photographic reproductions of almost every unpublished manuscript or unique imprint in the various Mayan and Mexican languages.

Tozzer holds many other rare materials. Among the more significant holdings are:

• the Adolph F. Bandelier Collection relating to the Indians of the American Southwest
• the Henry O. Beyer Collection relating to the history and ethnography of the Philippine Islands
• the Jaroslav Pasternak Collection of Ukrainian archaeology
• the field notes of Alfred M. Tozzer and Sylvanus Griswold Morley
• the personal papers of Cora Du Bois
• field reports of expeditions led by Henry Field to Pakistan and the Middle East

Library History 

Tozzer is the oldest library in the United States devoted to collecting ethnology, archaeology, and related anthropological fields. Today the library holds one of the largest and most comprehensive anthropology collections in the world.

Founded in 1866 at the bequest of George Peabody as part of the new Peabody Museum, the library was first known as the Peabody Museum Library. It was renamed in 1974 in honor of Alfred Marston Tozzer (1877–1954), Hudson Professor of Archaeology at Harvard and the library's second librarian. Tozzer helped build the library's Middle American archaeology and ethnology collection.

Tozzer Library was made possible by gifts from the Tozzer family and the late Francis Boyer.