Posted on Jan 1, 1995

Doris Zemurray Stone '73H

Doris Zemurray Stone '73H, an internationally-recognized expert on the archaeology of Latin America, died Oct. 21 in Covington, La. She was
eighty four.

A resident of Madisonville, La., her interests took her from Antarctica to Latin America to Mongolia to satisfy her lifelong curiosity about the development of civilization. Just this fall she had traveled to Ethiopia.

President Roger Hull said, “Doris was a kindred spirit. Whenever we met we always compared notes about exciting places to travel to and explore. I will miss her sense of adventure, her good humor, and her affection for Union College.”

Doris Zemurray Stone was born in New Orleans, daughter of Samuel and Sara Zemurray. Her father was president of the United Fruit Company and a philanthropist who presented a chair of Middle American research and the Gates collection of Mayan relics to Tulane University.

She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1930
Doris Zemurray Stone and married 73H Roger Thayer Stone, who graduated from Union in 1928. They moved to Costa Rica in 1930, where he operated a coffee-growing business. She became an associate archaeologist with Tulane's Middle American Research Institute and later was named a research fellow in Central American archaeology for the Peabody Museum of Harvard University.

Her travels took her through Central and South America, Europe, Siberia, Greenland, China, India, Tibet, and Outer Mongolia. She published several monographs, contributed to
The
Handbook of South American Indians
, and was the author of three books The Archaeology of Central and Southern
Honduras
, Introduction to the Archaeology of Costa Rica, and The Talamancan Tribes of Costa
Rica
.

At the time of Mr. Stone's death in 1983, he was president of the Zemurray Foundation, of New Orleans, which supports education, cultural programs, civic affairs, hospitals, and medical research. Mrs. Stone was president of the foundation at her death.

She made several visits to the College. In 1973 she received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the College. In 1987 she delivered a Minerva lecture on “Cross-Cultural Influences in the Pre-Columbian Art of Costa Rica,” and in 1989 she attended the inauguration of Martha Huggins as the Roger Thayer Stone Professor of Sociology and Anthropology.

In 1975 the Stones established the Washington Irving Chair in Modern Literary and Historical Studies at the College.

Mrs. Stone was a member of the American Anthropological Society, the American Ethnographical Society, the American Geographic Society, the Sociedad Mexicana de Antropoligia, and the Royal Anthropological Institute (London). She received the Harvard Medal from the Harvard Alumni Association last year in recognition of her scholarship. France, Panama, and Honduras each gave her the equivalent of a knighthood, and Tulane University awarded her an honorary degree.

Survivors include her son, Samuel Z. Stone, who is head of the Center for Political and Administrative Investigation and Training, a respected Costa Rican “think tank;” two granddaughters; and five great-grandchildren.