Synopses & Reviews
Focuses on the professionalization of archaeology in turn-of-the-century America, ranging from Biblical archaeology to the Maya and the American Southwest.
Synopsis
These twelve essays focus on the struggle to professionalize Americanist archaeology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Controlled by antiquarian and aristocratic collectors in the mid-nineteenth century, the field passed into the hands of professionals practicing a full-fledged archaeological science by the early twentieth century.
The authors deal both with mainstreams in archaeological thought, professionalization, and science and with the relationship of archaeology to American society and culture. During the developmental struggles, powerful men and institutions marginalized women, ethnic minorities, the lower and middle classes, and practitioners with the wrong pedigree, and blocked research agendas that diverged from the norm.
Table of Contents
Robert Burkitt and George Byron Gordon: an end and a beginning / Elin C. Danien -- Buying a curator: establishing anthropology at Field Columbian Museum / Donald McVicker -- Recognizing the foundation of prehistory: Daniel Wilson, Robert Chambers, and John Lubbock / Alice B. Kehoe -- Petrie's head: eugenics and near eastern archaeology / Neil Aher Silberman -- Augustus Le Plongeon: a fall from archaeological grace / Lawrence G. Desmond -- American Palestinian and biblical archaeology: end of an era? / William G. Dever -- Brahmins and bureaucrats: some reflections on the history of American classical archaeology / Stephen L. Dyson -- Women and classical archaeology at the turn of the century: Abby Leach of Vassar College / James W. Halporn -- Uncovering a buried past: women in Americanist archaeology before the first World War / Mary Ann Levine -- Alternative networks in the career of Marian White / Susan J. Bender -- Harvard vs. Hewett: the contest for control of southwestern archaeology, 1904-1930 / Don D. Fowler -- Women in southwestern archaeology: 1895-1945 / Jonathan E. Reyman.