A New Deal for Southeastern Archaeology.

A New Deal for Southeastern Archaeology. Two Ph.D dissertations in history (one in 1982 and the other in 1985)on a topic not treated in such detail before, at universities farseparated, and at approximately the same time, seems something of anunusual coincidence. In the early 1980s, however, archaeologists in theUS were beginning to show an interest in the history of their owndiscipline, 1985 being the occasion for a grand celebration in honour ofthe 50th anniversary of the founding of the Society for AmericanArchaeology The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) is the largest organization of professional archaeologists of the Americas in the world. The Society was founded in 1934 and today has over 7000 members. (we are a young country, remember, and in the US one becomes'historical' when one reaches 50). This was also about thetime of the 50th anniversary of the New Deal.Paul Fagette was, and is, an academic historian whose interestfocuses on the history and politics of science. His approach to thestudy of archaeology in the New Deal concentrates on the bureaucracy ofgovernment and the organization and 'professionalization' ofthe discipline of archaeology. Edwin Lyon began graduate work inarchaeology, but for his Ph.D switched to history. His career has beenas an archaeologist/historian with the US Army Corps of Engineers. Bothmen found a wealth of untapped documents in federal, state anduniversity archives to delve into what is truly a unique period in thehistory of archaeology The history of archaeology has been one of increasing professionalisation, and the use of an increasing range of techniques, to obtain as much data on the site being examined as possible. OriginsThe exact origins of archaeology as a discipline are uncertain. anywhere.As its title implies, Fagette's book focuses on the New Deal and'American archaeology' in general, while Lyon concentrates onthe southeastern US. In point of fact, the vast amount of availableinformation is on the southeast where the greatest number of New Dealarchaeological projects took place, and both books treat this area indetail.This is not the place to go into the intricacies of Roosevelt'sNew Deal programme, but a short background review is perhaps in order.The Depression came in the fall of 1929; Roosevelt was elected in thefall of 1932, with a promise of change. By mid 1933 the economy was in ashambles and hundreds of thousands of people were out of work; Congressimmediately created the Federal Emergency Relief Administration Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was the new name given by the Roosevelt Administration to the "Emergency Relief Administration" set up by Herbert Hoover in 1932. It was established as a result of the Federal Emergency Relief Act. (FERA)which could dispense funds to individual states for 'relief'programmes, particularly to put unskilled men and women to work. Thewinter of 1933 was predicted to be a hard one, and by Executive Order,Roosevelt created the Civil Works Administration The Civil Works Administration was established by the New Deal during the Great Depression to create jobs for millions of the unemployed. The jobs were to be merely temporary, for the duration of the hard winter. Harry L. Hopkins was put in charge of the organization. (CWA CWA Clean Water Act (33 USC)CWA Communications Workers of AmericaCWA Concerned Women for AmericaCWA CEN Workshop Agreement (European pre-normative document)CWA County Warning AreaCWA Clean Water Action ). The CWA was tobe a temporary measure, with funding to employ four million peoplethrough the winter. The Works Progress Administration Works Progress Administration:see Work Projects Administration. (WPA WPA:see Work Projects Administration. WPAin full Works Progress Administration later (1939–43) Work Projects AdministrationU.S. work program for the unemployed. ), throughwhich archaeological projects were funded until 1942, was not createduntil 1935. In general, these New Deal relief projects were devoted to'public' works - building roads, bridges, state and nationalpark recreation areas. Archaeological projects became a part of theserelief work programmes because a few people were in the right place atthe right time.The Smithsonian Institution was the only federal agency at the timewith any archaeologists. Since the late 1920s influential citizens inMacon, Georgia, had been badgering Smithsonian to come there and helpcreate a wonderful tourist attraction at the huge prehistoric site knownas Ocmulgee. Similarly, with the creation of FERA, citizens inMarksville, Louisiana, purchased the large prehistoric site in theirtown, found more than 100 eligible labourers, and called on theSmithsonian to send an archaeologist to help excavate so that'their' site could become a tourist attraction. Fagette pointsout that CWA projects in the fall and winter of 1933 needed to be inplaces where the weather was reasonably good, but more particularlywhere there was high unemployment. The rural south fitted the bill, andwith the Smithsonian's urging the first 'reliefarchaeology' programme began in August 1933 at the Marksville site,with work starting at Ocmulgee soon thereafter, and at six other smallersites, five in Florida and one in California. All funds for theseproject were to be expended by mid 1934 and the CWA was to go out ofexistence, but when it was possible to have 50 to 100 men at a site, agood deal of dirt was moved. Both Smithsonian and FERA administratorswere convinced that archaeological projects would be appropriate forusing large numbers of the unemployed.Between the end of the CWA and the creation of the WPA, yet anotherquasi-federal agency came into being, the Tennessee Valley Authority Tennessee Valley Authority(TVA), independent U.S. government corporate agency, created in 1933 by act of Congress; it is responsible for the integrated development of the Tennessee River basin. (TVA TVA:see Tennessee Valley Authority. ). This agency was to build dams creating huge reservoirs, largelyto generate electricity, on the mainstream and main tributaries of theTennessee River, affecting parts of Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama.Although the legislation creating this agency did not mention the factthat thousands of sites would be lost, professional archaeologists andthe Smithsonian exerted pressure to provide for 'rescue' work.CWA, WPA and TVA funds were used for excavations on dozens of sites nowunder large man-made lakes.So that is the bureaucratic background to how an immense amount ofarchaeological research was conducted between 1933 and 1942 in thesoutheast, with lesser numbers of sites worked on in Pennsylvania,Texas, the Great Plains, and initially in California. The influence ofthis federally sponsored work on the development of archaeology in theUS cannot be over-emphasized, and is the focus of Fagette's book.Enormous amounts of information were preserved; huge sites with multiplemounds and village areas were more fully excavated than would ever bepossible again; the discipline of archaeology came out of the experiencea strong scientific profession, and according to Fagette, politicallyknowledgeable. It was not, however, a smooth transition from a few'ivy tower' researchers to 'relief' archaeology.The highly coloured and braided thread woven throughout both theseaccounts emphasizes two themes: the lessons archaeologists learned aboutgovernment bureaucracy, and the importance to the learning process andthe results of a few influential personalities. To those of us in the USthe names of these individuals are legendary: Gordon Willey, JesseJennings, William Haag, James Ford, George Quimby, A.R. Kelly, to name afew. When the Smithsonian's archaeologists looked for trainedsupervisors, these men and their contemporaries were mostly in themiddle of their graduate work. The University of Chicago and theUniversity of Michigan (body, education) University of Michigan - A large cosmopolitan university in the Midwest USA. Over 50000 students are enrolled at the University of Michigan's three campuses. The students come from 50 states and over 100 foreign countries. provided the bulk of these supervisors. Men whomay have had one field-training session were given supervision of 50 ormore workers on sites about which essentially nothing was known.Although there was an effort by the Smithsonian, the National ResearchCouncil and eventually the National Park Service (A.R. Kelly wasappointed the first NPS NPS National Park ServiceNPS Naval Postgraduate SchoolNPS Net Promoter Score (customer management)NPS Non-Point Source pollutionNPS Native Plant SocietyNPS Norfolk Public Schools (Virginia)archaeologist in 1935) to provide standards bywhich work should be conducted, there was a general lack of centralizedcontrol or authority. Archaeologists have never been good at'unnecessary paperwork' and the burden of this can beunderstood in an account Lyon gives. In finishing the report (1966) onthe WPA survey of the state of Georgia, Robert Wauchope recalledsubmitting reports on purchases, balance sheets, petty cash statements,sponsor contributions, laboratory inventories, accident reports,equipment reports, mileage records, laboratory and field party costanalyses, with new requirements appearing periodically. Lyon reportsthat Wauchope had to produce a 'unit cost analysis for the projectin which the average cost for one month was $0.000048 per unit . . .Wauchope so tormented the WPA officials with figures that they could notenter into their forms that they finally eliminated thisrequirement' (p. 113). Lessons learned by everyone!Although Fagette had the advantage of Lyon's dissertation beingavailable, both researchers could see in the documents - and hear fromthose who had been involved - of the importance of key men in eachstate: Major William S. Webb in Kentucky; T.M.N. Lewis in Tennessee;James Ford in Louisiana; A.R. Kelly in Georgia; Walter B. Jones For other people named Walter Jones, see Walter Jones (disambiguation).Walter Beaman Jones, Jr. (born February 10, 1943, in Farmville, North Carolina) is an American politician; a Republican, he currently represents North Carolina's 3rd inAlabama. Webb, although not trained as an archaeologist, had been doingarchaeology since the early 1920s, and he had a commanding voice andposition. He was put in charge of administering all TVA-WPA projects,and this eventually brought him into an infamous conflict with T.M.N.Lewis at the University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee (UT), sometimes called the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UT Knoxville or UTK), is the flagship institution of the statewide land-grant University of Tennessee public university system in the American state of Tennessee. . Territoriality TerritorialityBehavior patterns in which an animal actively defends a space or some other resource. One major advantage of territoriality is that it gives the territory holder exclusive access to the defended resource, which is generally associated with (not unknown inmany parts of archaeology), professional and personality differenceswere set down in the correspondence which survives. Fagette seems moreinterpretive and judgmental in recounting this and other turmoils thanLyon ('Such verbiage verbiage - When the context involves a software or hardware system, this refers to documentation. This term borrows the connotations of mainstream "verbiage" to suggest that the documentation is of marginal utility and that the motives behind its production have little to do with , which typified Lewis's communications,reflected a vindictiveness and critical mindset mind��setor mind-setn.1. A fixed mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person's responses to and interpretations of situations.2. An inclination or a habit. that was whollyinappropriate.' Fagette, p. 109).Aside from these juicy bits of gossip, there were, as can beimagined, some enormous problems: the archaeology was practicallyunknown, the techniques untried, and supervisors not experienced enough,the labourers completely inexperienced (and individuals on crews oftenchanged daily as they were assigned to a different project by apaper-shuffling bureaucrat). And that was just with the field work. Moreoverwhelming in most cases was the laboratory work. This was consideredsecondary by the WPA and TVA officials, and the case in Tennessee seemsparticularly glaring. Four years' worth of excavation took placebefore a lab was set up in 1938 to start processing the material (Lyon,p. 151). With the TVA projects in particular, the archaeologiststhemselves were most concerned with getting the material and informationout of the ground before the reservoir filled - the lab work could bedone later. The advisory committee and the WPA's own'scientific advisor' were urging the WPA to require thearchaeologists to write reports before going on to another project. Ifthere had been enough experienced archaeologists, this might have beenpossible, but all those with knowledge were in the field and it was thefield work which provided the means to employ the unskilled workers whoso desperately needed the money. Eventually a few large labs were setup: one in Knoxville at the University of Tennessee, one at theUniversity of Kentucky Coordinates: The University of Kentucky, also referred to as UK, is a public, co-educational university located in Lexington, Kentucky. in Lexington, and one in Birmingham, Alabama(where 60 people were employed according to Lyon, p. 149). These labsoften employed semi-skilled and skilled workers: artists, photographers,typists. Huge amounts of material was processed, but often only'preliminary' reports were written. Major Webb seems to haveinsisted on being principal author on most of the TVA reports, whetherhe had been on the project in the field or not - no wonder he came intoconflict with some of those working under him.The criticism of collections and information sitting on dustyshelves, unanalysed, has been levelled at this period in archaeologicalhistory, as it has been at the period of 'salvage' archaeologydone in advance of other great dams on the Missouri River and itstributaries after World War II. But the excavations were done, thousandsof photographs taken; notes, maps, drawings compiled; and artefactscatalogued. Many of the sites have indeed become state or nationalparks, with continuing research, associated museums, and modern curationfacilities (Ocmulgee National Monument in Georgia; Moundville StateMonument in Alabama; Marksville State Park in Louisiana; and the NatchezTrace Parkway Natchez Trace Parkway:see National Parks and Monuments (table). in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi are the bestexamples). Many other sites were quickly inundated and will never beavailable. And if reports were not forthcoming immediately, some of themare now. Since the time of these dissertations (and even of thepublication of the books themselves), three major publications have beenissued dealing with important WPA and/or TVA projects (Lewis et al.1995; Hally 1994; Coe 1995).It is difficult to know whether to recommend one of these books overthe other. Despite dealing with essentially the same topic and using thesame sources, the results for the reader may be quite different. Becauseof Fagette's interest in the history of science and in this case,its relationship to government, his background on the growth ofarchaeology in the US, and the details given of the federal programmesdealing with archaeology are in greater detail than in Lyon's book.Fagette attempts to analyse the growth of 'professionalism' inarchaeology during this period, seeing the interplay of university-basedscientists and government archaeologists as a kind of catalyst, but theresult seems somewhat superficial to me. Lyon provides more informationon the individual players in this field (generally a paragraph for eachmajor archaeologist with educational background and succeeding career),and considerably more detail on the sites excavated and the findings.However, for those not familiar with the geography, much less theprehistory prehistory,period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to , this may be difficult to follow: names of sites and thecounty of their location are not particularly helpful. Although thereare five maps in Lyon's book, they are not particularly usefuleither, except perhaps to remind one of where the various southernstates are in relation to each other. That may be something of aguessing game, however, because the name of each state is not shown. Inaddition, Map 4, entitled 'TVA Archaeology Sites', actuallyshows the locations and names of the dams themselves, not sites.Fagette, on the other hand, has but one map of the US indicating,presumably pre��sum��a��ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. , the approximate location of all projects (although I notethree indicated in Arkansas when I know there were only two) - butagain, the state names are not indicated. Findings are relayed verybriefly by Lyon and seem to have been taken from the field reports. Heprovides a much more useful account for archaeologists of the'Legacy of New Deal Archaeology' (chapter 7) in terms of basicculture history recorded, typologies created based on ceramics, andsyntheses possible because of regional perspectives. The notes andbibliography in both books will be extremely useful to futureresearchers in seeing the influence of the individuals and their careerson present-day archaeology. I think it might be most instructive to doas I did: get both books, skim the parts that are redundant, readFagette for the detail on the workings of this massive federal reliefprogramme and the relationships amongst archaeologists, archaeologicalorganizations and the federal agencies, skip the boring pages in Lyon onhow many post-holes or sherds were found at which site, but read enoughto get a feel for the scope of the individual projects and the size ofsome of the sites. For example, from Fagette's first chapter (p.12):'During this time [the beginning of the Depression] anunanticipated experience ultimately facilitated archaeology's laterinclusion into the federal relief structure. The origins of thatphenomenon resided not in the hub of excitement that grew in WashingtonDC with Roosevelt's arrival, but down South in Macon, Georgia.There, the rebirth of the idea of relief labor for scientific workoccurred. This chronicle provides a case study of the relationshipbetween state societies, archaeology, and the federal government inthose early Depression years. The events that transpired helped set inmotion an evolving, if complex political relationship that encouragedpolitical maturation in the discipline.'And in Lyon's chapter 4 (pp. 101-2):'Elliot excavated the large Robbins Mound [in Kentucky] and amuch smaller mound nearby from 1939 to 1941. The small mound, reduced to2 feet tall by farming, was excavated in August and September, 1939,resulting in discovery of a single Adena tomb. Work started on the largemound in September 1939, with excavation ending in May 1941 [about 20months]. This mound measured 125 by 135 feet and was 20 feet high. Ithad been larger and was probably conical until it was partiallydestroyed by local residents searching for gold. The mound wascompletely excavated, revealing its structure.'ReferencesCOE, J.L. 1995. Town Creek Indian Mound '''Town Creek Indian Mound is a National Historic Landmark near Mount Gilead, Montgomery County, North Carolina, in the United States.[2] The site preserves a ceremonial mound built by the Pee Dee, a group of Mississippian mound building people that thrived in : a Native American legacy.Chapel Hill (NC): University of North Carolina Press The University of North Carolina Press (or UNC Press), founded in 1922, is a university press that is part of the University of North Carolina. External linkUniversity of North Carolina Press .HALLY, D.J. (ed.). 1994. Ocmulgee archaeology, 1936-1986. Athens (GA)University of Georgia Press The University of Georgia Press or UGA Press is a publishing house and is a member of the Association of American University Presses.Founded in 1938, the UGA Press is a division of the University of Georgia and is located on the campus in Athens, Georgia, USA. .LEWIS, T.M.N. & M.D. KNEBERG (compiled and edited by L.P.Sullivan). 1995. The prehistory of the Chickamauga Basin in Tennessee.Knoxville (TN): University of Tennessee Press The University of Tennessee Press (or UT Press), founded in 1940, is a university press that is part of the University of Tennessee. External linkUniversity of Tennessee Press .WAUCHOPE, R. 1966. Archeological survey of Northern Georgia, with atest of some cultural hypotheses. Salt Lake City (UT): Society forAmerican Archaeology. Memoir 21.