Early Life and Work
Matthew was born in Salinas, California, where his father managed the Southern Pacific Milling Company. Most of his childhood days were spent on his grandfather's ranch where he first developed an interest in antiquity, collecting arrowheads and researching artefacts.
Stirling majored in anthropology under Alfred L. Kroeber, graduating from of the University of California in 1920. His interest in the Olmecs began in about 1918, when he saw a picture of a "crying-baby" blue jade masquette, published by Thomas Wilson of the Smithsonian Institution in 1898. When he traveled to Europe with his family after graduation, he found the masquette itself in the Berlin Museum, and intrigued by the Olmec culture, took time to look at other specimens in the Maximilian Collection in Vienna, and later, in Madrid.
Stirling was a teaching fellow at the University of California during 1920-21. He then joined the Smithsonian Institution, as a museum aide and assistant curator in its Division of Ethnology at the National Museum. He worked there until 1925. He located several more Olmec pieces in the museum. During this period, he also obtained his Masters Degree in Anthropology from the George Washington University. He was later, in 1943, to receive a Doctorate in Science from Tampa University.
He excavated on Weedon Island for the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) in 1923-24, and at Arikara villages in Mobridge, South Dakota, during the summer of 1924. Stirling resigned from the Smithsonian to lead a 400 member, Smithsonian Institution-Dutch Colonial Government, expedition to New Guinea in 1925. He conducted ethnological and physical anthropological studies among the indigenous peoples there, and collected a number of natural history specimens, which now form one of the most valuable collections in the National Museum.
He returned to take over as chief of the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology in 1928. He retained the position until 1957, his title changing to director in 1947. He went to Ecuador in 1931-32, conducting ethnological studies of the Jivaro, as part of Donald C. Beatty's expedition. He also worked along the Gulf Coast, directing archaeological digs in Florida and Georgia.
He married Marion Illig on December 11, 1933. She was his secretary at the BAE, and was to accompany him on most of his archaeological expeditions. Together they had a son and a daughter.
Stirling was intrigued by Marshall Saville's two 1929 reports, Votive Axes from Ancient Mexico. Subsequent discussions with Saville launched Stirling into a phase of his career which would be focused on what was then beginning to be called Olmec culture.
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