Front Matter

1 J. C. Harrington Medal in Historical Archaeology Donald L. Hardesty 2006 Donald Lynn Hardesty was born 2 September electrical transformers. When the plant moved 1941 in Terra Alta, West Virginia, to Ezra J. to Somerset, Pennsylvania, in 1959, so did the and Mary Aidren Jenkins Hardesty. Don’s Hardesty family. father clerked in the local store and worked After Don graduated from Terra Alta High as a coal miner. From 1943 through 1945 School in 1959, he moved to Washington, the family lived part of the time in Baltimore, DC, at first living with an uncle. He got a Maryland, while Ezra Hardesty was employed job at the National Bureau of Standards and in a defense plant. Before leaving for then located to the District of Columbia near Maryland, the family bought a small farm in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Don worked at the Bear Wallow, 2-1/2 miles from Terra Alta and bureau for three years, taking night classes in lived there until 1959. After World War II, electrical engineering at George Washington Don’s father went to work for the Uptegraf University. He learned about archaeology Manufacturing Company, which built industrial by visiting the Smithsonian Institution on Historical Archaeology, 2006, 40(2):1–5. Permission to reprint required. 2 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 40(2) J. C. HARRINGTON MEDAL IN HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 3 weekends, particularly the National Museum of Meanwhile, Hardesty had become interested Natural History, and by reading. He decided in physical anthropology. He attended the archaeology was more interesting than electrical International Seminar on Methods in Human engineering and applied to the universities of Biology at Wayne State University in Detroit, New Mexico, Arizona, and Kentucky. He was Michigan, right after the riots of 1967–1968, accepted at all three but chose the University an interesting and dicey time to be in Motown, of Kentucky where he encountered Douglas but he still needed a dissertation topic. Hard- K. Schwartz, then a young associate professor esty had finished his course work, received an who was developing a local archaeological MA in 1967, taken his doctoral comprehensive program, running a small museum, and serving exams, and was ABD by spring 1968. Eco- concurrently as an associate dean. logical anthropology was just becoming a major Schwartz, who had done his dissertation focus in American anthropology, growing out of research on the archaeology of the Grand the earlier cultural ecology of Julian Steward. Canyon, had begun a project to excavate Hardesty did his dissertation on that topic, archaeological sites on the Unkar Delta in the completed in 1972, which was the basis for bottom of Grand Canyon, an epic undertaking his Ecological Anthropology (1977). In spring in southwestern archaeology since the crew and 1968, a phone call led him to Nevada. all supplies had to be shuttled from the South Warren d’Azevedo had been brought to the Rim to the canyon bottom and back by heli- University of Nevada (after 1968 the University copter. Don took classes from Schwartz with of Nevada, Reno, or UNR) in 1963 to start an fellow students Robert Dunnell (also a refugee anthropology program. By 1967–1968, the from West Virginia) and Lee Hanson. (Dunnell nascent department was moving toward split- went on to get a PhD at Yale and had a long ting off from sociology and broadening its cur- and eminent career in southeastern archaeology riculum. Someone was needed who could teach and teaching at the University of Washington; physical anthropology. D’Azevedo called Verne Hanson became a prominent National Park Ser- Dorjahn at U of O, who recommended Hardesty. vice archaeologist.) He was hired on a one-year appointment for the From 1962 through mid-1964, Hardesty and 1968–1969 academic year. Dunnell did archaeological fieldwork in south- The appointment was made permanent in western and eastern Kentucky, initially under May 1969 (contingent on his finishing a dis- Schwartz’s direction until Schwartz left to sertation), and Don had found a fiancée. On become director (later president, now president- 29 August 1969, Donald Lynn Hardesty married emeritus) of the School of American Research Susan Bennett, of Reno, Nevada, the daughter (SAR) in Santa Fe. After moving to SAR, of Henry (Chick) and Maria Zimbalist Golet Schwartz continued the Grand Canyon project, Bennett. Susan was a horsewoman, an artist, and Hardesty was a crew chief during the major and an avid bridge player, considerably talented excavations in 1967. and skilled at all three. She gave up the horses Hardesty graduated from the University of but remains an artist, an avid Giants baseball Kentucky in 1964 and entered the anthropol- fan, and a gracious spouse and helpmate to ogy graduate program at the University of Don, nearly 37 years (and counting) as of this Oregon (U of O), taking his first archaeology writing. seminar under Albert Spaulding. Later, the By 1971 Hardesty was turning his interests inimitable Don Dumond became his disserta- from Mesoamerica to the Great Basin. He had tion advisor. In 1967, Dumond sent Hardesty undertaken an archaeology project in the Lava off to Mexico to help U of O architect George Beds area of southern Oregon, including some Andrews record the Classic-period Maya site of of the redoubts built by the Indians during Comalcalco in the State of Tabasco. Hardesty the so-called Modoc War of 1872–1873. It continued to pursue Mesoamerican archaeology was his first foray into Great Basin historical in graduate school and as late as 1974 worked archaeology. Don Hardesty and his UNR at the post-Classic Maya site of Utatlan in the colleagues have made the Great Basin the central western highlands of Guatemala with a team focus for their researches in prehistoric and from SUNY-Albany. historical archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, 2 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 40(2) J. C. HARRINGTON MEDAL IN HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 3 ethnohistory, and ecological anthropology of the demography, environmental change, and various ethnic populations who have lived therein historical archaeology. These publications led at various times. These populations include to his appointment from 1977 to 1987 to the Native Americans as well as Chinese, Basques, prestigious international directorate for arid Mexicans, and members of the numerous ethnic lands ecosystems of the UNESCO Man and groups from northern and western Europe who the Biosphere program. came to the region after about 1820. When the He did not really commit himself fully to department initiated a doctoral program in 1988, historical archaeology until fall 1978, which he the focus was expanded to the American West, spent with Stan South, Ken Lewis, and others including Mexico, to better reflect the range at the University of South Carolina, working of faculty and student research. A major part at Middleton Place Plantation near Charleston. of that program has been Hardesty’s historical Hardesty began to put together the methods he archaeology track, which continues to attract had learned in prehistoric archaeology with those students from across the country. of South and his colleagues and applied them In 1973, Don ran his first archaeological field in the Great Basin. Increasingly, his ecological school in Little Valley, a high mountain valley anthropology theoretical orientation led him to on the east side of the Sierra Nevada between think about the American western frontier, par- Reno and Carson City. The area had been ticularly the mining frontier, in new and fruitful logged during the Comstock boom times, and ways. Since 1980, he and his graduate students he focused on a sawmill and a logging camp. have applied historical archaeological and eco- In January 1974, he gave his first paper at logical anthropology methods and theories to a professional meeting on the Little Valley investigate the industrial, social, and cultural work at the annual meeting of The Society histories of mines, mining districts, and mining for Historical Archaeology in Oakland, Cali- towns in the Great Basin at (among other fornia. Paul Schumacher of the National Park sites) Cortez, Candelaria, Shermantown, Island Service heard the paper and encouraged Don Mountain, Treasure City, Unionville, and espe- to continue to develop historical archaeology cially Virginia City as well as in the Mojave in the Great Basin. As SHA members know, Desert at Fort Irwin and Joshua Tree National Schumacher had a long-standing interest in his- Park. More recently, he and his students have torical archaeology and was aware that cultural invaded Alaska to investigate Klondike era Gold resource management (CRM) was then aborning. Rush sites and early military communications After the now-legendary meeting on conservation systems. archaeology in Denver, Colorado, in December In 1993, in cooperation with the Nevada 1974, CRM quickly came to dominate American State Historic Preservation Office, Hardesty archaeology, particularly in the West. Hardesty and his students initiated an ongoing program soon found no lack of contracts available to of public archaeology in Virginia City involving support various historical archaeology projects. dozens, indeed hundreds, of volunteers ranging He completed work in Little Valley and began from school children to well-trained avocational excavation of two Pony Express stations, Cold archaeologists. Thousands of tourists who came Springs and Sand Springs, as well as the Rock to Virginia City seeking the mythical Bonanza Spring Overland Stage and Telegraph station in of television fame eagerly watched, instead, the west-central Nevada in 1976–1978. meticulous excavation of 19th-century saloons In the meantime, he finished his justly famed and other cultural features. By 1990, Hardesty Ecological Anthropology, first published in 1977 and his students also began investigating 1930s and widely used for many years as a textbook. homesteads and sites at which various gender In 1979 it was translated and published in and ethnic issues could be defined through Spanish and, later, in Chinese (2003).

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