From the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian: Jazz Age archaeologist Jesse Walter Fewkes and co-workers showing off their anti-mosquito gear while working at the Weeden Island archaeological site in Florida, 1923.
1970s London Archaeologist Culture
Hobley’s Heroes is an online archive that shows something of life as an archaeologist digging in London in the 1970s and 1980s, including dig site photos and an fanzine-like comic/workplace newsletter. Brian Hobley, Chief Urban Archaeologist, was their boss. It’s a fascinating repository that includes some far out field fashion and a glossary of the digger’s argot (“If in doubt, rip it out” was in use at least as early as 1974).
The Early Career of Leonard Woolley
New on the Jazz Age Adventurers page: Leonard Woolley: Prelude to Ur
“A tiresome little man but a first class digger and an archaeologist after my own heart” – Gertrude Bell
Free for All: The Vermont Archaeological Society and the Journal of Vermont Archaeology
The Vermont Archaeological Society is celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, and they have not only made pdfs of their journal free to download, they have also made membership in the Society free.
The Journal of Vermont Archaeology has been published since 1994. In it, you can read about the squabble over who discovered Vermont’s first Paleoindian site.
Victor Rolando’s monograph 200 Years of Soot and Sweat: The History and Archeology of Vermont’s Iron, Charcoal, and Lime Industries, originally published in 1992, is also available for download at their site.
Who Really Discovered the First Paleoindian Sites in Vermont?
In 1927, the Folsom site in New Mexico, which contained the distinctive fluted stone points of the same name directly associated with an extinct species of bison, was identified by archaeologists as the first Paleoindian site. In conjunction with the similar, but earlier, Clovis fluted points found at Blackwater Draw a few years later, these two sites provided clear evidence that humans had been present in the United States since the end of the Pleistocene.
As these discoveries became publicized and archaeologists looked for more examples of early sites, it soon became apparent that fluted points had been found in many states by amateur antiquarians, often as surface finds. Without good contextual data, however, no one had realized how old these points actually were.
In 1929, Vermont collector Benjamin Fisher read an article about the Folsom site in the New York Herald Tribune. He immediately wrote a letter to the scientist mentioned in the paper, Barnum Brown, at the American Museum of Natural History: Continue reading “Who Really Discovered the First Paleoindian Sites in Vermont?”
Urban Archaeology and Foodways in South Carolina
New book review of Charleston: An Archaeology of Life in a Coastal Community by Martha Z. Zierden and Elizabeth J. Reitz published in the Anthropology Book Forum of the American Anthropological Association.
Coffeehouse Archaeology in England
Before England fell in love with tea, there was coffee. Beginning in the 1600s, coffeehouses spread through England. Historians think of them as the more polite, refined counterpoint to taverns and alehouses, a place where the customers – mostly male – could drink and discuss and debate the news of the day.
It’s a bit surprising that almost no coffeehouses have been explored archaeologically, but Craig Cessford and colleagues now describe artifacts, tightly dated to between 1770 and 1780, from a small brick cellar associated with Clapham’s Coffeehouse in Cambridge, England.
Continue reading “Coffeehouse Archaeology in England”
Frans Ferdinand Blom: Danish Dixie Bohemian Archaeologist
“My first encounter with a cave filled with human skulls and bones occurred in 1928 at Huxjal.” Frans Ferdinand Blom knew how to start an article. His bio is now up at Jazz Age Adventurers.
Alice L.L. Ferguson
Alice L.L. Ferguson, artist, D.C. socialite, and amateur archaeologist, added to the Jazz Age Adventurers.
Birdie Parker, a Woman of the Mother Road
Trowelblazing archaeologist/ethnologist Birdie Parker, a.k.a. Bertha Parker Cody, is also a Woman of the Mother Road.