Born in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on October 25, 1885, Alfred V. Kidder enjoyed an outstanding education. As a student at elite prep schools in Cambridge and Boston, Mass., and Switzerland, he entered Harvard, where a childhood interest in Indians blossomed into a profession when he was introduced to the formal study of anthropology. After receiving his bachelors in 1908, he became one of the first Americans to receive a doctorate in archaeology in 1914, working on the pottery of the Southwest.

Working at the Phillips Academy, Andover, until 1929 (primarily on the site at Pecos dekl Arroyo), and thereafter as Chair of the Division of Historical Research of the Carnegie Institution, Kidder's interests remained centered on the Southwest. In addition to the Pecos site in New Mexico, he made valuable contributions to the archaeology of Mesoamerica through the Carnegie, coordinating excavations of Mayan sites at Chichen Itza and Uaxactun in Yucatan and Kaminaljuya in Guatemala. Although he was often denigrated by critics in the profession for being too little concerned with synthesizing the abundant data he collected in the field and for reaching too limited conclusions, many of his conclusions on the classification of southwestern basketry, for instance, endured for many years. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1934, and the American Anthropological Association named an award for eminence in New World archaeology in his honor in the early 1950s.

Kidder retired from the Carnegie in 1950, teaching briefly at the University of California before retiring to his home in Cambridge. He died on June 11, 1963, leaving behind his wife, Madeleine, whom he married in 1910, and five children.