The Road from Frijoles Canyon

William Y. Adams retired from the University of Kentucky in 1992. He has published numerous articles and books including Religion and Adaptation, The Philosophical Roots of Anthropology, Nubia: Corridor to Africa, and Archaeological Typology and Practical Reality: A Dialectical Approach to Artifact Classification and Sorting. He resides in Lexington, Kentucky.

"Like many colleagues of my generation, I would simply have become an 'Indianologist' had there been any such discipline (comparable for example to Egyptology). I cared nothing in those early years about the peoples of Africa and Oceania, or even for that matter about the [American] Indians of the eastern U.S. But anthropology a generation earlier had co-opted the study of Indians so completely that there was simply no other way to become an 'Indianologist.' So my resolve to be an anthropologist was formed, even before I reached high school, and I have never wavered from it since. So also I feel that the long and winding road I've followed in my subsequent career is, figuratively speaking, the road from Frijoles Canyon." - from The Road from Frijoles Canyon"