Body of Pennsylvania, the Atwater-Kent Museum, the Museum

REVIEWS 239 Philadelphia and the Development of papers offers an important and coherent account Americanist Archaeology of one major American city’s contributions to Don D. Fowler and David R. Wilcox the intellectual development of archaeology as a learned profession in the Americas. (editors) Curtis M. Hinsley’s sweeping and finely University of Alabama Press, crafted contribution leads off the volume with Tuscaloosa, 2003. xx+246 pp., 13 an insightful analysis of Philadelphia’s late-19th illus. $65.00 cloth. century social milieu that set the city apart from Boston, New York, and other eastern cities as Being a native Philadelphian, I had the good a center of intellectual foment. Hinsley sagely fortune early on to come under the infl uence observes that it was Philadelphia’s late-19th- of the cultural opportunities offered by the city. century atmosphere of “business aristocracy” Many of Philadelphia’s venerable institutions and genteel wealth that ultimately created the were routinely on my family’s list of places climate that allowed for the leaders of the to visit when going “into town,” including the city’s institutions to become some of the coun- Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, the try’s prime players in the developing fi eld of Philadelphia Academy of Music, the Franklin archaeology. Presaging some of the later chap- Institute, the Philadelphia Art Museum, and the ters in the volume, Hinsley identifi es these key University Museum of the University of Penn- players as Daniel G. Brinton, Sara Stevenson, sylvania. In my career, I soon became aware of Stewart Culin, Charles C. Abbott, and Henry the many similar but perhaps less-well-known C. Mercer. learned institutions that Philadelphia has to offer, Brinton, arguably, was one of North America’s most of which have well established 18th-cen- three most infl uential “gentlemen scholars” as tury roots, including the American Philosophical the 19th century came to a close, the others Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, being John Wesley Powell at the Bureau of the Carpenter’s Company, the African American American Archaeology in Washington and Museum of Philadelphia, the Historical Society Frederick Ward Putnam at Harvard’s Peabody of Pennsylvania, the Atwater-Kent Museum, the Museum. As Regna Darnell ably portrays in Balch Institute, and the Athenaeum, to name a the book’s second chapter, Brinton was a self- few. But it was not until I read this superb trained solitary theoretician who enjoyed consid- book, ably edited by Don Fowler and David erable stature among the Americanist intellectual Wilcox, that I learned just how infl uential vari- elite, in spite of the fact that he had no mean- ous personages associated with some of these ingful institutional affiliation (his short-lived Philadelphia institutions were in archaeology’s positions at Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural formative years. Sciences and Penn’s University Museum were This volume had its genesis in the Gordon R. strictly honorary). Importantly, Darnell explains Willey Symposium on the History of Archae- that it was Brinton’s intellectual skirmishes with ology convened at the annual meeting of the Powell and Putnam that ultimately led to the Society for American Archaeology held in structuring of the field of anthropology into Philadelphia in 2000. It includes 10 exception- four subdisciplines, no small accomplishment ally well-written and researched essays, which for an independent avocational scholar without are preceded by a brief introduction by the edi- an institutional “safe haven.” tors and a forward by Jeremy A. Sabloff, direc- Chapter 3, written by Elin C. Danien and tor of the University Museum of the University Eleanor M. King, is devoted to a biographical of Pennsylvania. Each of the contributions is so study of Sara Yorke Stevenson, an Egyptologist well written and seamlessly edited that it is dif- who almost single-handedly founded the Univer- fi cult to detect that different hands were respon- sity Museum of the University of Pennsylvania sible for each. Taken together, this collection of and oversaw the construction of its building. As Historical Archaeology, 2007, 41(4):239–241. Permission to reprint required. 240 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 41(4) a frequent columnist for the Philadelphia Public Moore, a remarkable native Philadelphian born Ledger, Stevenson reported on the social and to the manor who, over a 27-year career, exca- political issues of the day and was especially vated more than 850 sites, the large majority vocal in her support of woman’s suffrage. In being mounds in the southeastern U.S. Although a late-19th and early-20th-century world that the quintessential “gentleman archaeologist,” offered few opportunities for women to excel, Moore was a gifted writer and published pro- Danien and King unabashedly point out that digiously on his work, mostly in Philadelphia’s Stevenson did indeed excel, becoming (as one Academy of Natural Sciences Journal. He contemporary described her) “president of every- had a reputation for digging quickly, which thing except the United States and the Women’s led some critics to question whether he was Christian Temperance Movement” (p. 46). more a pot hunter than an archaeologist, but Written by David J. Meltzer, chapter 4 is because of his publication record, he had the devoted to a discourse on one of the most con- respect of most of his professional colleagues. troversial late-19th-century fi gures in American While Aten and Milanich portray Moore in a archaeology, Charles C. Abbott. Abbott grew up sympathetic light, they do question whether the as an “arrowhead” collector on a farm overlook- principal of archaeological conservation would ing the fall line on the Delaware River near have been better served if Moore had not been Trenton that later was to become widely known so obsessed with excavation. as a major northeastern archaeological complex, A somewhat more obscure Philadelphia fi gure, the Abbott Farm. Among the artifacts in his col- Lucy L. W. Wilson, is the subject of chapter lection were crude bifaces and other less formal 7. Presented by Frances Joan Mathien, Wilson stone tool forms that Abbott maintained derived was a locally well-known Philadelphia educa- from the so-called glacially deposited “Trenton tor who also was one of the few women at gravels,” providing indisputable proof of the the turn of the century who engaged in several existence of an “American Paleolithic.” Although archaeological excavations, principally at Otowi Abbott’s beliefs were initially supported by the Pueblo in New Mexico. Wilson studied biology likes of Frederick Ward Putnam and other infl u- and geography at the University of Pennsylva- ential personages of the time, unrelenting attacks nia, where she also received her doctorate in by W. H. Holmes and Stewart Culin, among education and then was a teacher and princi- others, ultimately discredited Abbott’s claims pal for three decades at secondary schools in and laid to rest the so-called “Paleolithic wars” Philadelphia. Although publications and records by the beginning of the 20th century. of her excavations are not extensive, Mathien A section on late-19th-century curator Frank argues Wilson was an important product of her Hamilton Cushing, written by editor David time and functioned every bit as professionally Wilcox, is the subject of chapter 5. Cushing’s as did her professional contemporaries. major talent lay in his ability to replicate Zuni In chapter 8, Robert L. Schuyler presents an crafts so accurately that even the Zuni couldn’t essay on a more recent Philadelphia fi gure, John distinguish the genuine from the replica, caus- L. Cotter. Until his passing at the age of 87 ing Cushing’s career to be laced with charges in 1999, Cotter was one of the last surviving and countercharges regarding the authenticity of links to the seminal early-man studies at sites a number of specimens Cushing claimed were such as Clovis and Lindenmeier. Moreover, legitimate. Through his connections with Steven- with his National Park Service appointment in son and Brinton, among others, Cushing never- 1954 as director of excavations at Jamestown, theless was able to land a plum job directing an he became one of the fi rst to formally practice “expedition” to southwest Florida in search of what was known at the time as “historic sites specimens for the university museum. According archaeology” (that is, the study of archaeology to Wilcox, the charges of fraud dogged Cushing dating to the period after European coloniza- throughout his career, and he became relegated tion). It was not until his NPS transfer to to the sidelines of Philadelphia’s major archaeo- Philadelphia in 1957 that he became solidly logical fi gures. ensconced in the archaeology of the historical Lawrence E. Aten and Jerald T. Milanich period, becoming one of the leading practitio- in chapter 6 tackle the career of Clarence B. ners of urban archaeology and teaching the fi rst REVIEWS 241 historical archaeology course in the U.S. at the move away from the unapologetically scientifi c University of Pennsylvania in 1960. While not paradigm chartered in 19th-century Philadel- a native Philadelphian, Cotter spent more than phia to the more humanistic, refl exive approach 40 years living in Philadelphia while working at adopted today. the park service and teaching at Penn. As such, There is much to recommend about this book. Schuyler quite correctly points out that the city One could quibble that Henry Mercer, one of afforded Cotter the intellectual and institutional Philadelphia’s reigning turn-of-the-century “gen- means to help forge the development of histori- tleman antiquarians” whose spectacularly inno- cal archaeology in the 1960s and 1970s that is vative concrete building in Doylestown, Penn- directly ancestral to the more fully mature fi eld sylvania, still houses his unparalleled collection as practiced today.

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