George Clapp Vaillant

Archaeologist, born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. His Harvard PhD thesis established a chronology of Maya ceramics, and his later work established the historical sequence of cultures in pre-Columbian Mexico. At the American Museum of Natural History (1927–41) he directed the museum's Mexican excavations. His major work was The Aztecs of Mexico (1941).

George Clapp Vaillant (April 5, 1901, Boston, Massachusetts – May 13, 1945, Devon, Pennsylvania) was an American anthropologist.

Vaillant attended Noble and Greenough School in his hometown.

During his college years, he worked at the Harvard Peabody Museum, and continued on excavating in Pecos, New Mexico. At the American Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., Vaillant was appointed the position of associate curator from 1930 to 1941.

Vaillant conducted archaeological expeditions in the Southwest from 1921 to 1922 and 1922 to 1925, in Egypt from 1923 to 1924, and in Central America in 1926 and 1928 to 1936. Three major excavation sites in the Basin of Mexico, Zacatenco, Ticome, and El Arbolillo, are located.

Aztecs of Mexico: Origins, Rise and Fall of the Aztec Nation was completed in 1944. Vaillant also wrote several monographs on Middle American excavations.

Vaillant was known for the reconstruction of the early stages of Mexican Culture. Throughout his research of relating archaeology to the events and descriptions of colonial sources and Mexican traditions, Vaillant concentrated on problems of chronology and culture history.