An Appreciation of an Archaeological Life: Creighton Gabel, 1931-2004 Author(S): James Wiseman Source: Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol

An Appreciation of an Archaeological Life: Creighton Gabel, 1931-2004 Author(S): James Wiseman Source: Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol

An Appreciation of an Archaeological Life: Creighton Gabel, 1931-2004 Author(s): James Wiseman Source: Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 29, No. 1/2 (Spring, 2002 - Summer, 2004), pp. 1-5 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3181481 Accessed: 31-07-2018 16:52 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Field Archaeology This content downloaded from 128.197.33.210 on Tue, 31 Jul 2018 16:52:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 1 An Appreciation of an Archaeological Life: Creighton Gabel, 1931-2004 Creighton Gabel, Editor of the Journal of Field Archaeology high school Creighton attended Muskegon Junior College from 1986 to 1995 and co-founder of the Department ofAr- for a year before transferring to the University of Michigan chaeology at Boston University, died February 22, 2004, in at Ann Arbor in order to study archaeology. Since there Vero Beach, Florida, after an extended battle with cancer. He was no archaeology department at the university, the dean's was 72. office first placed him in the Classics Department where he studied classical archaeology for a year, but because his in- In his thirty-three-year career at Boston University, terest was more in prehistory, as a junior he changed his Creighton Gabel participated in the creation of two acade- major to anthropology. When he entered the anthropolo- mic departments; served as acting director of a research gy program the chairman of the department, and later his center, chairman of one department, and acting chairman advisor, was Leslie A. White, who was then promoting the of another; and edited for nine years an international jour- concept of a "science of culture." Creighton commented nal, all while building an international reputation as an wryly (Gabel 1995: 30) that "White might be considered Africanist. At the same time, he won the admiration and af- the godfather of the New Archeology" because Lewis Bin- fection of colleagues and students for his command of ar- ford, a Michigan graduate student later in the 1950s, had chaeological scholarship, his kind and modest demeanor, taken some inspiration from White's search for cultural and his gentle humor. "laws" to advocate a "science of archaeology." His life-long interest in archaeology, according to His archaeological training at Michigan came from Creighton, had its beginnings in the Field Museum of James B. "Jimmy" Griffin, Albert C. Spaulding, and Emer- Chicago. During childhood visits to his maternal grand- son F Greenman, but his course of study covered the full parents who lived in the metropolis, his grandmother range of the "four-field" approach to anthropology pre- would take him on the elevated train to the museum, vailing at the time: ethnography and ethnology, linguistics, where he was captivated by Egyptian mummies, the diora- physical anthropology, and archaeology. There were no mas of cavemen, and other displays of relics of the past. laboratory courses, but there was a memorable field school These memories never left him, and eventually helped to directed by Greenman at a site on the north end of Lake frame his studies in college. Creighton's full name, we Huron, where Creighton had his first archaeological field might note here, was Walter Creighton Gabel after Walter experience in summer 1953. His wife, Jane, was a fellow Creighton, his mother's father in Chicago. student. A year earlier, Creighton had married Jane Whit- The Gabel family home was in Muskegon, Michigan, field, who had been his classmate since high school in where Creighton was born on April 5, 1931, and where he Muskegon, and who was then completing her B.A. in Eng- grew up. The city is on Muskegon Lake, which connects to lish Literature at the University of Michigan. They would Lake Michigan, and so provided the opportunity for nau- remain close companions in America, Europe, and Africa tical interests to flourish. Creighton was among several over the entire fifty-one years of their marriage. youths who became sailing buffs by the time they were in Creighton stayed on at Ann Arbor for an M.A., which junior high school, and sailing remained a part of his life as he completed in one year, but had decided to go elsewhere long as he was able to put to sea. After graduation from for the Ph.D., in part because he wanted to pursue Old This content downloaded from 128.197.33.210 on Tue, 31 Jul 2018 16:52:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 2 Editorial Figure 1. Creighton Gabel (left), Louis Leakey, and Zinjanthropus in Evanston, Illinois, 1959. World prehistory (not available then at Michigan), Willey,and in Walter W. Taylor, and Robert McC. Adams, among part because he wanted, as he put it (Gabel 1995: 30), others. "to The symposium was held at the Field Museum, a pursue archaeology as an independent subject, rather thanparticularly fitting and nostalgic venue for Creighton within the context of a traditional anthropology curricu- whose childhood visits there had led him into archaeology. lum" (not available any place in the United States at thatAn important turning point in Creighton's career oc- time). He chose the University of Edinburgh, where curred he in 1959 when Melville J. Herskovits, Director of studied under Stuart Piggott, who held the Abercromby the African Studies Program at Northwestern and who had Chair of Prehistoric Archaeology. He gathered more been field urging him to take up African archaeology, provided experience as a member of the excavation team at fundsWest for Creighton to attend the Pan-African Congress on Kennett Long Barrow (a megalithic tomb site), and Prehistory com- held that year in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa, pleted his studies in just two years, before leaving capitalEdin- of the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The burgh to accept an instructorship in anthropology stars at of the Congress were Louis and Mary Leakey, who Northwestern University in 1956. During that first year showed of the audience the skull ofZinjanthropus, their recent teaching, loaded with courses in all fields of anthropology, discovery at Olduvai Gorge (FIG. i). After the Congress and teaching an extra evening course once a week in Chica-Creighton visited South African hominid sites with Philip go, he carried out final revisions on his dissertation andTobias his and other sites in Northern Rhodesia (now Zam- Ph.D. in Prehistoric Archaeology was conferred in 1957.bia), where he was introduced to the Rhodes-Livingstone Creighton remembered his years at Northwestern withMuseum, Victoria Falls, and the Zambezi River by Brian fondness, but also felt isolated as the only archaeologist Fagan, on who was then the new Keeper of Prehistory at the campus. He began seeking out archaeological colleagues museum. at The visit resulted in plans for Creighton to return the University of Chicago and elsewhere, and in to1958 Northern Rhodesia for research in the Kafue River area. Creighton, Robert Braidwood, and Joseph Caldwell In orga- 1960-1961, Creighton spent much of the year excavat- nized a weekly symposium on comparative prehistory ing that a 4000-5000-year-old settlement near the Kafue that attracted as participants such distinguished archaeologists was especially rich in organic remains (Gabel 1962, 1963a, as Jimmy Griffin, F. Clark Howell, Arthur Jelinek, Gordon 1963b, 1965). Africa thereafter remained the focus of his This content downloaded from 128.197.33.210 on Tue, 31 Jul 2018 16:52:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Journal of Field Archaeology/Vol. 29, 2002-2004 3 rival at Boston University as Professor of Classics and the Founding Editor of thefournal of FieldArchaeology, the first volume of which would appear in 1974. We recognized early in our acquaintance that we shared similar views about archaeology, especially regarding its nature as a blend of science, social science, and the humanities, and so began developing a broader base for archaeology at the university. Our first efforts resulted in an archaeological field school at an early historical-period glass factory at Temple, New Hampshire, sponsored jointly in summer 1974, by the departments of Anthropology and Classics, followed in the academic year by an interdepartmental In- troduction to Archaeology course taught jointly by Creighton and myself at first, and in later years by col- leagues from both departments. Over the next several years, while I chaired the Department of Classical Studies and Creighton was Acting Director of the African Studies Center (1973-1975) and then Chairman of Anthropology (1976-1979) for the second time, we formed a working group of the archaeologists on campus and developed an archaeological curriculum which formed the basis of an in- terdepartmental Archaeological Studies Program instituted by the College, with the approval of the University, in Jan- uary 1979. The Program offered the B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Archaeological Studies, and the faculty were drawn from Anthropology, Classical Studies, Art History, and Religion. The Program, however, had no real faculty lines in the budget-those remained in their home departments-and there was only a small budget for administration of the Figure 2. Creighton Gabel in 1989 looking at photographs of African ar- Program with no central base for archaeology students or chaeological sites where he directed excavations.

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