1

The Antiquity of Man and

the Development of
American Archaeology
DAVID J. MELTZER

INTRODUCTION

The study of the antiquity of man in North America took on its present
dimensions and significance in the latter half of the nineteenth century. By
the 1860s, European geologists and prehistorians had demonstrated that
man's past antedated the biblical chronology. From that time until 1927, ar­
chaeologists and scientists on this continent grappled with North American
evidence for great antiquity, laboring under the long shadow of the Euro­
pean prehistoric sequence.
On the initial assumption that human history was similar on the two con­
tinents, North America and Europe, archaeologists and geologists in the
1860s and 1870s focused their attention on the apparent similarity or dissim­
ilarity in the evidences of great antiquity for man in North America. It be­
came obvious, however, that North America's archaeological record was in
Some senses fundamentally different than that of Europe. Increasingly frus­
trated by their inability to discover bone-bearing sediments of great antiquity
in either cave or alluvial deposits, American prehistorians adopted the
strategy that similarity in form between European and American implements
indicated similarity in age. In the 1890s, this position came under vigorous
and occasionally vitriolic attack and triggered a debate on matters of stone
tool technology and morphology, cultural and evolutionary sequences in
I
New World chronology, and the relevance of ethnology in archaeological in­
l
I

L
 :erpretation. However, these strictly archaeological concerns were often
~clipsed by political ones. Owing to the institutional alignments of the an­
:agonists and protagonists of glacial man, the cQntroversy became one of
whether national scientific organizations (in this instance the United States
Geological Survey [USGS] and the Bureau of American Ethnology [BAED,
encouraged or retarded scientific knowledge in their treatment of non federal
practitioners whose views did not mesh with "official" science (Hart
1976:5). This in itself was a manifestation of a crisis on another scale, the
growing pains wrought by the increasing professionalization of the nascent
discipline of archaeology (Darnell 1969; Hinsley 1976).
A number of historians and archaeologists have commented directly on
various aspects of the early man debate. Mounier (1972), Willey and Sabloff
(1974), and Wilmsen (1965, 1974) sketch the chronicle of the problem and
examine particular aspects of the arguments over the American Paleolithic.
Hinsley (1976, 1981), Lacey (1979), Mark (1980), Noelke (1974), and
Spencer (1979), although not always directly concerned with the early man
controversy, examine the institutional setting of the problem and the in­
dividual and social interaction that structured the controversy. Finally,
Hart's outstanding (1976) thesis examines the early man debate in terms of
the role of government science (particularly government geology and ar­
chaeology) in the late nineteenth century.
The concern in this chapter is to bring some of these disparate threads
together and to present a detailed history of the early man controversy, with
special attention given to the resolution of the archaeological issues. Viewing
the debate first as an archaeological problem and secondarily as a matter of
policies and politics, I examine (1) the early impact of the European
Paleolithic on American scientists; (2) the antagonistic response to glacial
man on the part of the USGS and BAE scientists and their intellectual prog­
eny; and (3) the reason why resolution of the debate had to wait on the
Folsom finds of the late 1920s, some 60 years after the possibility of glacial
man was first considered on this continent.
The historical analysis covers the period between 1860 and 1940, with the
bulk of the narrative focusing on the decades between 1890 and 1927. Three
events within the period will serve as focal points for the analysis. These are
(1) the seminal debate that surrounded the nearly simultaneous publication
of G. Frederick Wright's (1892b) Man and the Glacial Period and the ar­
chaeological researches of William Henry Holmes on prehistoric quarries
(Holmes 1890, 1892); (2) the controversy over ancient skeletal remains
discovered in Vero, Florida, in 1916; and (3) the discovery at Folsom, New
Mexico, in 1927 of artifacts associated with extinct bison. This discussion
will be preceded by a brief section outlining the research in the period prior
to 1890 and followed by a concluding section tracing the impact of early man
research on the development of American archaeology.
THE PROLOGUE TO EARLY MAN: 1860-1890
A much greater antiquity can be assigned to the human race
than that which can be deduced from the Bible.
H. Mar~ineau 1848
Europe in the 1850s witnessed two profound intellectual revolutions. The
first of these was, of course, the publication by Darwin and Wallace in 1858
and by Darwin alone in 1859 of the theory of evolution by natural selection.
Contemporary with but independent of Darwin (Gruber 1965) was the sec­
ond revolution-the demonstration that man had a history antedating the
biblical record. This was the foundation to our understanding of the history
of our species, as Darwin later (1871) acknowledged, and is the starting point
for this analysis.
As had been common for well over 1000 years (Haber 1959), in the early
decades of the seventeenth century human history was measured by the
Scriptures. Biblical scholarship, carefully enumerating the days and years
detailed in the Bible, had arrrived at the conclusion that "heaven and earth,
centre and circumference, were created all together in the same instant ...
this took place and man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B.C.
at nine o'clock in the morning" (John Lightfoot, 1642, quoted in Daniel
1962: 19). In the absence of geological or archaeological evidence to the con­
trary, the biblical chronology provided a time line for the revealed history of
the Earth and man. Received as it was from the hand of God, its sanctity was
unquestioned, and it was incorporated into the margins of the King James
Bibles.
It proved increasingly difficult, however, to reconcile nature with the con­
straints of the Bible's finite time. To save their theism, as well as unshackle
their theory, physical scientists (beginning with Descartes, Newton, and
Halley) advanced the argument that the Bible should be treated allegorically
rather than literally, at least when one considered physical phenomena. By
separating discussion of matter (the profane) from man (the sacred), one
could distinguish science from theology and thus practice each with a clear
conscience (this the so-called Cartesian compromise; see Toulmin and Good­
field 1965).
Historical disciplines like geology also adopted the compromise to be
freed from the strictures of finite time. As John Playfair argued, "It is but
reasonable, therefore, that we should extend to the geologist the same liberty
 r
4 DAVID J. MELTZER
of speculation which the astronomer and mathematician are already in
possession of, and this may be done by supposing that the chronology of
MOSES relates only to the human race" (Playfair 1802: 126-127). As an ex­
ample, when the young Charles Lyell launched his assault on the scriptural
geology of the Reverend William Buckland and Baron Cuvier, he criticized
their attempts to discover geological phenomena that were direct manifesta­
tions of biblical events but was careful to respect the distinction between
geological history and the revealed history of man (Haber 1959). As the age
of the Earth was steadily pushed back into the dim and distant past, man's
last refuge in the search for ultimate design and his own uniqueness in the
animal kingdom lay in the affirmation of the Mosaic chronicle and his own
late creation. Here, fortunately, the Bible and geology seemed to agree
(Bowler 1976).
Thomas Huxley once remarked that in his youth there was a barrier stand­
ing in front of a deep human past with a sign that read: "No Thoroughfare.
By order. Moses" (Huxley 1898:viii). Nevertheless, by the 1840s that sign
was being ignored (Grayson 1983). Still ever-present was the concern with
whether man was a recent creation, but the focus of the inquiry had shifted
from the biblical record to the fossil record. Owing to the geologi­
cal-chronological indexes provided by Cuvier's extinct animals, there were
firm temporal markers with which to align man's antiquity. The question
was no longer whether there was agreement between Scriptures and geology,
but whether human remains (skeletal or artifactual) could be found in valid
association with the bones of the extinct fauna.
Through the decades of the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s an increasing number
of sites apparently exhibiting that association had been discovered (Oakley
1964). Yet, for a variety of reasons (see Grayson 1983), each case for contem­
poraneity was rejected fairly systematically. It was not until the late 1850s,
following excavations organized by a committee of the Geological Society
(London) at Brixham Cave in southwestern England, that evidence for the
intermingling of man with the bones of extinct Pleistocene fauna was widely
accepted (Gruber 1965). The work at this site led to a careful reexamination
of previously reported discoveries, particularly those of the perennial cham­
pion of early man, Boucher de Perthes (who for years had been collecting
specimens in the alluvial deposits of the valley of the Somme). And it also
had the effect of catalyzing the discipline of prehistoric archaeology, trigger­
ing the analysis and excavation of cave sites and alluvial deposits linking man
and the pre-biblical fauna (see summaries in the contemporary literature by
Evans 1872, Lubbock 1865, and Lyell 1863).
The sequence of human prehistory, as refined by Lubbock (1865), was no
longer one of Adamite preceded by pre-Adamite but was instead a series of
culturally defined periods, each characterized by a particular artifact class or
I
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 5
association. Not surprisingly, the sequence was soon incorporated within the
emergent evolutionary theory of Darwin. As Grayson observes, the Origin
of Species "provided a theoretical framework within which a tremendous
human antiquity could be understood ... questions of human antiquity
quickly became caught up in discussions of the larger issues of human evolu­
tion" (Grayson 1980:28).
The significance of the discoveries in Europe was not lost on American
scientists, despite their preoccupation with the U.S. Civil War (Putnam
1889; but compare Wilmsen 1965). Foremost among those publicizing the
European Paleolithic finds was Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution. Henry by then had an active and established pro­
gram of supporting archaeological and anthropological research and
publication (see Hinsley 1981 :34-40), beginning with the inaugural volume
in the Smithsonian's Contributions to Knowledge series (the now classic
memoir of Squier and Davis on Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi
Va{(ey). Yet, much of the research in American archaeology in the period
prior to 1860 was concerned solely with surveying and mapping the mounds
and earthworks of the major river valleys, and, as Tax (1973) has argued,
such studies had reached a kind of impasse by 1860. Their innately inductive
nature made it apparent to all that studies of the sort would never pass
beyond the survey stage (Hinsley 1981; Tax 1973).
For that reason, and simply for the intellectual excitement generated by
the European discoveries, Henry was quick to advertise the importance and
scientific nature of the finds (Hinsley 1981 :41). He initially published a series
of articles by Adolph Morlot, professor of geology at Lausanne Academy,
Switzerland (Morlot 1861, 1863, 1865). Morlot's descriptions of the finds
and his analysis of the theoretical basis for the new study of high antiquity
(outlined in Hinsley 1981) awakened, in Henry's words, "a new interest in
the study of the remains of the ancient inhabitants of this country" (Henry in
Reclus 1862:345). As a consequence, he decided to "insert a number of other
articles on the same subject" in the Annual Reports for subsequent years
(Henry in Reclus 1862:345). Ultimately, in the years between 1859 and 1867
he published some 13 papers on archaeological and ethnological topics in the
Smithsonian Annual Reports, most of which were translations or reprintings
of recent work by eminent European prehistorians (Tax 1973). He also
published Instructions for A rchaeological Investigations in the United States
(Gibbs 1862).
These Instructions, aimed at travelers and residents of the "Indian coun­
try" (Gibbs 1862:392), were circulated to gather information on the physical
type, arts, and manufactures of the original inhabitants of North America.
The call for cranial data in the first part of the Instructions was part of the
then-controversial debate over the racial nature of the New World
6 DAVID J "AELTZER
prehistoric popL1lation~ (e .g., Wilson 1863; see also Gould 1981; Gruber
198 J). The second part of the questionnaire was designed to elicit dal a tha t
might reveal apparent similarities with European finds and was structured so
as to direct research in a parallel fashion. Gibbs felt that, like archaeological
investigations in Europe. studies of shell beds and caves wendd take
American archaeology back to a very remote period in aboriginal history
(Gibbs 1862:395).
Gibbs's a!)sumptiOJl was not unreasonable. [t had long been suggested (by,
among others, Tbomas Jefferson and Benjamin Barton: see Wilmsen 1965),
that 1here was ample nonarehacologkal-geological evidence, sucb as
linguistic and racial diversity, that seemed to demonstrate the great antiquity
of the Indians on tbis continent (l~aven 1856). With the impetus of the Euro­
pean finds, and ,vitb the belief that "there is exact synchronism [of
geological beds J between Europe and America" (Whitt lesey J 868 :4-5), it
became reasonable to anticipate finding ancient human relics here as well.
Skeletal material that had been found in the earlier dccades of the century
was resurrected from the dosets of the profession and reexamined. Sir
Charles Lyell himself metaphorically dustcd off the Natchez (human) pelvic
bone, allegecl to have been found with the bones of an extinct A1ega/!lerillm,
and candidly adm!tted that his previous rejection of the association was not
altogether unbiasecl: "No doubt had the pelvic bone belonged 10 any recent
lllammifer other than man, such a theory [of fortuitous association of the
man and Mega!herium] would never have been resorted to" (Lyell 1863:203).
Similarly, Koch's mastodon ',>,las reevaluated (Dana 1875), as were Nathaniel
Holmes fiDds of pottery in connection with aA1egatheriuIII, Count Portales'
find of jaws and teeth of man in a "fossilized" condition in Florida, Lund's
work in the caves of Brazil and, of course, the famous skull discovered in a
mine in Calaveras County, California (Foster 1873; MacLean 1875; Wilson
1862: Whitney 1872). Much of this evidence ultimately proved invalid (see
Holmes 1899; Hrdli~ka 1907; McMillan 1976; but also see Stewart 1951).
nut based on this evidence, Foster was led to draw a chart depicting the
"Parallelism as to the antiquity of man in the two hemispheres" (Foster
1873 :79-81). For Foster, who took a more radical view than most of his con­
temporaries, these parallels reached back into the Miocene.
Foster also tended to perceive the issue in rather narrow terms, as though
the tnatter were already largely resolved. Others, particularly Charles Rau
(I 826-1887) and Sir Daniel Wilson (1816-1892), who were trained in Euro­
pean prehistory, were more sensitive to the arparent discrepancy between
the records of the two continents. Rau correctly perceived that "we are not
entitled to speak of a North American Paleolithic or Neolithic period. In the
New World the human contemporary of the Mastodon and the Mammoth, it
would seem, was more advanced in the manufacture of stone weapons than
IINTlQUIl Y OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARChAEOLOGY 7
his savagc brot her of the European dri ft period" (Rall 1873:397). He further
cautioned that while flint implements of the drift type were not scarL:e in
North America, they could not as yet be referred to any particular period
sillce they and other implements were in use among North American
aborigines in historic: times (Rau 1873: 398). More to the point, Rau argued,
many of the American implements were round in context with morc "ad­
vanced" cultural materials. and it was not entirely clear whether their
primitive nature was due to their antiquity or 10 their being unfinished im­
plements (Rau 1873:395). In the face of this, Rau chose to be circumspect in
the application of the analogy between European and American implements
and urged instead the further study and examination of caves and drift beds.
nut what had become clear by the time Rau made his plea was that the ar­
chaeological and geological situation on this continent was different from
that of Europe. Here there werC no deeply strati fied allu vial valleys or ca ves
with human artifacts or remains mixed indiscriminately \vit.h Pleistocene­
aged fauna (Wilmsen 1965). As a consequence. the definition of an
American Paleolithic age became of necessity based on typological
analogues. American researchers inferred from the work of Evans (1872).
Lubbock (1865), and Lyell (1863) the idea that alJ morphologically "rude"
objects were by definition Paleolithic in age (Noelke )974: 126)- based on
the assumption that the older the material, the more primitive its ap­
pearance. Identity between European and American implements would
determine the antiquity of the latter. II was a position some Europeans
challenged (Stevens 1870); but as Thomas \Vilson (1832-1902), curator of
prehistoric anthropology at the United States National Museum and trained
as a lawyer (Mason 1902), would later argue, "comparison is as good a rule
of evidence in archaeology as in law" (Wilson 1890:679).
The catalyst for these comparative studies was Charles C. Abbott
(1843-19 I9), who was a physician by u-aining but a naturalist and ar­
chaeologist by inclination (Dexter 1971). Abbott began his studies 011 his
ancestral farm near Trenton, New Jersey, in the late 1860s (Cross 1956; Hart
1976). At first he had held the notion that the arti facts being turned up on his
land were those of the precursors of modern Native American groups from
the region, but by 1876 he had become cOJJvinced tbey were instead the rem­
nants of a different, probably Paleolith ic, race (Abboll 1876a, I876b).
Within 2 years he announced that the previous race was glacial in age (Ab­
hot! 1877, 1878), and moved under the patronage of f. W. Putnam (1839­
1(15), professor and curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology at Harvard.
With Putnam's support, the geological studies at Trenton were put 011
firmer ground, beginning with the visit of Harvard geologist Nathaniel
Shaler in 1876 (Shaler 1876). Shaler ~\ias the first of a long line of geologists
8 DAVID J. MELTZER
who would parade through the Trenton locale over the next 100 years, but it
was not until the twentieth century that any consensus was reached on the
meaning of the deposits and the consequent age of the cultural material
(Cross 1956).
Abbott, however, was not the sort to let a bit of geological haggling stand
in his way:
Personally, 1can but express an opinion on the archaeological significance of the traces or
man found associated with these gravel deposits, and this is in nowise effected by the age
and origin of the containing beds. Whatever age the geologists may assign to them, be it
inter- or post-glacial, these traces of man must possess a very great antiquity [Abbott
1881:481].
Abbott's barely disguised dependence on apparent morphological analogues
between Europe and America to determine the age of cultural materials here
was only one aspect of his larger effort to align the prehistory of the two con­
tinents. In his Primitive Industry (1881), he took the next step.
In the course of his typological studies, Abbott had observed a marked
difference in the objects of Indian origin and the alleged Paleolithic
materials. He claimed that "they are as widely separated as the fossils of dif­
ferent geological formations" (Abbott 1881 :513). He took it for granted,
largely on the eminent authority of G. de Mortillet (1879, in Abbott
1881 :490-491), that the Acheulian hachets of France and the flint imple­
ments of the "River-drift man" of England were not only of a similar an­
tiquity but were likely the handiwork of the same people as the earliest inhabi­
tants of the Delaware Valley (Abbott 1881 :516). However, since the Indian,
according to "current opinion," was known to be a recent comer to North
America (Abbott 1881 :471), Abbott was faced with an embarrassingly large
hiatus in his sequence. He filled it and in the process firmly established not
only his reliance on the European data but also an apparent parallel in the
cultural history of the two continents.
Abbott found his solution in the work of W. Boyd Dawkins, who was
dealing with an analogous problem in British prehistory (Dawkins 1880). For
Dawkins, there were two Paleolithic races, the "River-drift men" and the
"Cave-men", with "the River-drift men [Lower Paleolithic] being of far
higher antiquity in Europe, and probably having lived for countless genera­
tions before the arrival of the Cave-men [Upper Paleolithic] and the ap­
peamnce of higher culture" (Dawkins 1880:233). Dawkins, however, saw no
apparent connection between the River-drift men and the Cave-men and
thus concluded that the former had become extinct while the latter, driven
from Europe and Asia after the ice age, had settled in the Arctic regions to
become Eskimos (Dawkins 1880:242).
Abbott saw some difficulties in Dawkins' scenario but on the whole
.l
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 9
readily accepted its applicability to the American data. While a separate race
of cavemen (and caves) were noticeably absent from this continent, the ar­
chaeological record did reveal assemblages of "more specialized argillite im­
plements," which "although found, to a large extent, upon the surface, and
associated with objects of Indian origin, really bear a closer relationship to
the rude implements made by the American River-drift man" (Abbott
1881:515). Abbott, in the absence of a race of cavemen, invented his own:
[T]here is sufficient evidence remaining to warrant the assertion that the paleolithic man
on the one hand, and the makers of the argillite spear points on the other, stand in the rela­
tionship of ancestor and descendant, and if the Jatter, as is probable, is in turn the ancestor
of the modern Eskimo, then does it not follow that the River-drift and Cave-men of
Europe, supposing the relationship of the latter to the Fskimo to be correct, bear the same
close relationship to each other. as do the American representatives of these earliest of
peoples? [Abbott 1881 :517].
For Abbott's purposes, the American record showed apparent homologies
and analogies with European prehistory, and his analysis of the relationship
between the two continents concluded with the triumphant assertion that
"the sequence of events, and the advance of culture, have been practically
synchronous in the two continents; and the parallelism in the archaeology of
America and Europe becomes something more than 'mere fancy'" (Abbott
1881:517).
That Abbott perceived such marked similarity, particularly when those
who were more familiar with the European record (e.g., Charles Rau) could
not, is due largely to the fact that, like many American-born scientists of his
time, he was anxious to place his work in the context of European scholar­
ship (Sinclair 1979). Because of that, he received no small measure of
recognition from the Old World. W. Boyd Dawkins (1883), M. Boule (1893)
and the evolutionist A. R. Wallace (1887), among others, praised Abbott's
work; Wallace was the first of many to liken Abbott to that other pioneer in
prehistory, Boucher de Perthes (see also Balch 1917; Topinard 1893; Wilson
1893).
American geologists and archaeologists were similarly inspired. Among
those was the Oberlin professor, G. Frederick Wright (1838-1921), who was
a geologist, theologian, and, with his good friend Asa Gray, American
champion of evolution. Wright had visited Trenton in November of 1880
and had predicted that if man had been there in glacial times, then he had
probably been in Ohio as well (Wright 1883). Shortly thereafter, Paleolithic
implements began appearing in Ohio (e.g., Metz and Putnam 1886; Mills
1890), Indiana (Cresson 1890b), Minnesota (Babbitt 1890), Delaware
(Cresson 1890a), and Washington, D.C. (Wilson 1889, 1890). On occasion
those tools were found in a geological context that suggested great antiquity,

10 DAVID J. MELTZER
but more often than not the age of the implement was determined by the
"rude" form and grade of the tool. The geological situation was observed
more for purposes of context than chronology.
As in the instance of the Trenton artifacts, the tools' Paleolithic identity
was determined by comparison with known Paleolithic tools from England
and France (Wilson 1890). At a meeting of the Boston Society of Natural
History, for example, Putnam took a series of tools from Abbeville and
Amiens (France), and laid them out on a table with American Paleoliths. He
then exhorted his audience to witness the identity in form, size, and structure
(Putnam 1888). A similar strategy was used in publication: In one instance,
Wright (1890) argued that the New Comerstown (Ohio) implement was a
genuine Paleolith, as evidenced by its being a perfect representation of
Figure 472 in Sir John Evans Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain
(Evans 1872; see also Putnam 1888:423-424).
The similarity between European and American paleoliths confirmed the
a priori belief in the geological antiquity of man on this continent, the
divergence and convergence of human history, and something of the psychic
unity of mankind. In a larger sense, it solved the problem of both the origin
and antiquity of man, although the focus was decidedly on the latter issue.
By the end of the decade of the 1880s, for Abbott and his colleagues, there
was sufficient evidence to confirm man's presence here in glacial times, and
for many the only question that remained was whether his antiquity might go
back significantly farther (Putnam 1885, 1888). Most proponents of early
man were not as enthusiastic as, say, Foster in his assertion that man dated
back to Miocene times (Foster 1873), but they were willing to grant an an­
tiquity in North America in the tens if not hundreds of thousands of years.
This was a significant block of earth history in the days prior to radiometric
dating.
As is frequently the case when a subject seems to have garnered a consen­
sus, summary articles and texts began to appear (McGee 1888; Putnam, ed.
1888; Wright 1889). Among those was an article by William John McGee
(1853-1912), a blacksmith turned geologist from Iowa working for the
United States Geological Survey. While unveiling some questionable
evidence, McGee reached the oft-cited conclusion that "however doubtful
the cases may be weighted, the testimony is cumulative, parts of it are unim­
peachable, and the proof of the existence of glacial man seems conclusive"
(McGee 1888:25). He even went so far as to assure the editor that "every
sentence has been carefully weighed and ... every utterance is thoroughly
reliable" (McGee to Youmans, May 26, 1888, McGee Papers, Le). For
McGee in 1888, the most impressive and reliable proof for glacial man came
from the Trenton gravels, where he imagined that Paleolithic implements
there numbered over 25,000 (McGee 1888:31; his apparent enthusiasm for
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 11
Abbott's work led him to exaggerate the number of Paleoliths, which actu­
ally numbered only 400, as Abbott later stated [Abbott 1889]). However,
McGee soon regretted more than an inflation of the artifact counts: In
November 1888 he wrote the geologist Warren Upham that he was beginning
to have doubts about the American Paleolithic era (Spencer 1979:211).
McGee's change of mind is due largely to his increasing interaction with
archaeologists of the Bureau of Ethnology (after 1894, the Bureau of Amer­
ican Ethnology), which was headquartered in Washington, D.C., under
the direction of the explorer-geologist-ethnologist John Wesley Powell
(1834-1902). The city of Washington in the days before the growth of the
university system was a major center of power for scientific research. The
centralization bred by the Civil War was the foundation of that strength
(Dupree 1957), and it extended into all realms of science as the government
tried its hand at geology, forestry, agriculture, anthropology, and natural
history (Dupree 1957; Lacey 1979). It was inevitable, perhaps, that because
the United States Geological Survey in the years under J. W. Powell (his term
as director extended from 1881-1894) played a major role in controlling the
wealth and future settlement of the American West, it would clash with ad­
vocates of states rights and local scientists (an issue thoroughly explored in
Stegner 1954). The root of the dilemma being, as Hinsley observes, the dif­
ficulty of "superimposing national horizons and networks upon a nation of
predominantly local communities and loyalties" (Hinsley 1981 :76).
It was not so much inevitable as perhaps symptomatic of the growing ar­
rogance of government scientists that the early man issue also became a bat­
tleground for federal and non federal scientists (Hart 1976; Hinsley 1976).
The proponents of early man (and this is important to note for the discussion
later) were not a collection of provincial hayseeds and bumpkins, but neither
were they part of the structure of Washington science. This fact figures
prominently in the debates that followed.
THE GREAT PALEOLITHIC CONTROVERSY: 1889-1900
It is quite within the limits ofpossibiljty that Boucherde Perthes
may turn out to have been the Dr. Abbott of France.
O. Mason 1893:461
Representing the government in the field of archaeology was the BAE, one
of the many offspring of Powell's fertile administrative and scientific skills.
Founded in 1879 in the same congressional session that created the USGS,
the bureau was nominally an arm of the Smithsonian Institution. In the early
years of its existence, the BAE concerned itself with ethnologic and linguistic
studies of the disappearing Native American groups in the western states.

12 DAVID J. MELTZER
However, wi th a congressional mandate in 1881 to examine the archaeology
of the prehistoric mounds and earthworks, it began to channel its energies
and-relatively speaking-its considerable financial resources into strictly
archaeological matters.
While most histories of archaeology stress the importance of the BAE in
the destruction of the Moundbuilder myth (Hallowell 1960; Silverberg 1968;
Willey and Sabloff 1974) few realize the equal importance of the BAE's
work on the Paleolithic issue or consider the important ties (Hart 1976: 144)
between Paleolithic and Moundbuilder research. The rejection of the theory
of a separate Moundbuilder race, like the rejection of a separate Paleolithic
race, are not isolated events (cf. Wilmsen 1965), but are an inevitable result
of the theoretical-institutional alliance of archaeology and ethnology at the
BAE. It is thus important to consider briefly the problem of the Mound­
builders prior to considering the role of the BAE in the Paleolithic debate.
The basic issue of the mounds revolved around whether they were built by
historically known Native American tribes (or their immediate ancestors) or
whether the mounds were a product of an earlier, more civilized race since
exterminated by those tribes. That the issue was given serious consideration
was due to the fact that by the time settlers moved over the Alleghenies and
Appalachians into the Ohio and Mississippi valleys (where most of the earth­
works are located), the local Native American groups had already suffered
massive depopulation due to epidemic disease, colonially stimulated war­
fare, and trading post economies. Surviving individuals in most instances
had neither the tradition nor memory of the utilization of the mounds and to
the white settlers seemed too culturally deprived to have ever done so.
This was more than an academic issue, loaded as it was with social and
political overtones. The idea that there was a lost race of Moundbuilders,
possibly the wandering Israelites or Atlantians, and that they were van­
quished by the Native Americans, not only seemed to have some empirical
support (or at least no refutation) but was also profoundly satisfying to those
engaged in a campaign of extermination against the Native Americans of the
West. While the Indian Wars may have caused some consciences to ache,
their guilt pangs were soothed by the belief that the Native Americans were
themselves intruders who had destroyed the glorious Moundbuilders
(Silverberg 1968).
J. W. Powell, unlike many of his contemporaries, did not accept the
dogma that the Native Americans were culturally impoverished. His own
rather sympathetic view was rooted partly in the psychological baggage ac­
quired as part of growing up the son of an abolitionist minister in pre-Civil
War Illinois (Darrah 1951) and partly in his own experience among the
Native American tribes of the Southwest (Darnell 1969). More to the point,
Powell had opened a number of mounds and had found in some of them
14 DAVID J. MELTZER
chaeology (Thomas 1898). Thomas observed that the problems facing North
American prehistorians were different from those of their European col­
leagues. In North America, in the absence of a true "proto-historic" period
and with no historical documents to use as stepping stones into the past,
history and prehistory cannot neatly dovetail as they do in the Old World
(Thomas 1898:2). And, unlike the Old World, we have here living reminders
of the past. As Samuel Haven remarked: "In this isolated land [the past] has
survived, a hoary hermit, to the very verge of the newest creations of nature
and the latest institutions of man. The flint utensils of the Age of Stone lie
upon the surface of the ground .... The peoples that made and used them
have not yet entirely disappeared" (Haven 1864:37).
Haven's comment was largely ignored by many of his contemporaries and
certainly by the later advocates of Paleolithic man (e.g., Abbott 1881). For
them, cultural change was patterned on the geological scale of the European
sequences, and the archaeological issue of early man was wholly separated
from the concerns of anthropology and ethnographic survivals. The Native
Americans were simply the latest in a series of races inhabiting the continent,
and they had little relevance to the presumed earlier groups (Wilson 1897).
As Moorehead once remarked, Thomas Wilson' 'knew little about modern
tribes and cared less" (Moorehead 1910:1 :251).
But for Thomas and the BAE archaeologists, the natives "were here and
must be recognized by every theory, must be a factor in every general conclu­
sion" (Thomas 1898:9). Further, because archaeology is based largely on
analogy, then one must begin with "the aborigines and monuments and
trace them back step by step into the past" (Thomas 1898:22; see also McGee
and Thomas 1905:xi-xii). Accepting a Paleolithic race was thus a priori im­
possible. Such an acceptance would require "in order to be consistent an en­
tire recasting of all the more stable theories which have been propounded"
(Thomas 1898:5) because it would introduce a massive hiatus into the
prehistoric record (McGee and Thomas 1905:54; Thomas 1898:6). Rather
than do that, it was better, in Thomas' mind, to accept the idea "advanced
by Mr. Keane in his Ethnology that appeal to traditional movements and
other traditional data [i.e., the ethnographic record] will have no bearing
upon the question of the origin of the people of America unless Paleolithic
man is abandoned" (Thomas 1898:6, emphasis added).
Notwithstanding the fact that Thomas took great liberties with Keane's in­
tent (see Keane 1901 :366-367), it is clear that Paleolithic man was abandoned
in order to accept the use of the traditional-ethnographic data. In a larger
sense this approach would merge the study of archaeology with ethnology,
allowing one to reconstruct cultures as Cuvier reconstructed extinct animals.
To accept that there had been a race of people on the continent that were
non-Indian, that dated from Pleistocene times, and that seemingly left no
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 13
Euroamerican artifacts (Powell 1894); additionally, he had seen mounds be­
ing constructed and used (Powell 1885). All this convinced him that at least
some of the earthworks had been constructed since historic times and likely
by Native Americans of the historic period.
Cyrus Thomas (l825-191O)-who in his long life was involved in medi­
cine, law, the ministry, entomology, and archaeology (Brown 1981)-was
assigned the task of proving Powell's theory. He was to demonstrate that
"the prehistoric mound builders and the historic tribes were part of the same
fabric of unbroken cultural development" (Smith 1981 :3). The manner in
which this was to be effected was simple: One worked from the known­
ethnographic present to the unknown-archaeological past. The process was
simply good uniformitarian geology, writ on the prehistoric record. After
all, Powell was by training and experience a geologist (Stegner 1954) and a
"confirmed uniformitarian" (Goetzmann 1966:563).
Supporting this austere methodological approach were some fundamental
theoretical suppositions. First, BAE research was firmly grounded in evolu­
tion, particularly the progress schemes of Lewis Henry Morgan's (1877) se­
quence of savagery-barbarism-civilization. Powell, who had read and
thoroughly despised Spencer (Lacey 1979), saw only a limited applicability
of Darwinism in human affairs (Hinsley 1981). We can see his basic
philosophy in the oft-cited (Darnell 1969:38; Hart 1976: 128) dictum that the
prehistoric record evinced the' 'continuity of the pre-Columbian population
of North America, subject to known evolutionary laws, as against the
cataclysmic theories postulating intrusive or extinct races" (Powell
1886: lxiii).
Second, much as the BAE program seems to foreshadow the direct his­
toric approach practiced in the twentieth century (Collins 1927; Wedel 1938),
there were important differences. The more modern version was spatially
localized, with only small areas being worked back from the historic to
prehistoric periods. The BAE program was continental in scale and applica­
tion.
Finally, in order to make the approach work one had to do more than
enumerate similarities between Native American and Moundbuilder ar­
tifacts and culture (Thomas 1885:66). One had to assume that there was a
continuous period of human occupation in North America; that prehistoric
populations were all of one race; and that the ethnographically known
Native Americans were the race that occupied the continent (Thomas
1898:8-9, 143-144).
The reasoning behind these assumptions is derived from the unifor­
mitarian and evolutionary perspective of Powell and the investigative stance
held by BAE scientists generally. The view finds its best expression in Cyrus
Thomas' general text Introduction to the Study of North American Ar-
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 15
succeeding generations would introduce a massive chasm in the prehistoric
record. This was not only bad uniformitarianism (in its appeal to peoples not
known in the present and in its introduction of discontinuity into the record),
but it also precluded the applicability of the ethnographic data in explaining
the archaeological record.
As Jacob Gruber has observed (1981, personal communication), the
ideological position and intent was to demonstrate that the Native American
race was essentially unchanged and unchanging (see also Trigger 1980). Any
apparent differences between the archaeological and ethnographic records
were thought to be either the minor temporal changes expected from the few
hundred years that probably separated the earliest and latest Native
Americans or, more likely, the result of the inter- and intra-tribal variation
so apparent among contemporary tribes (Holmes 1919; Thomas 1898). The
significant variation in archaeological materials was in their spatial context
and regional variability.
In the empirical matter of an American Paleolithic race, the BAE ap­
proach was implemented by the artist, geologist, and archaeologist William
Henry Holmes (1846-1933). Holmes' initial scientific training had been in il­
lustration, but he quickly established his geologic credentials on the Hayden
Surveys to Yellowstone Park in the early 1870s (Mark 1980). He was hired by
Clarence King for the USGS in 1881 (Nelson 1980:275) and in 1889 was
transferred by Powell from the USGS to a position as archaeologist for the
BAE. Holmes began his explorations of Atlantic coast archaeology at a
quarry site in Washington, D.C. (a site located just off the Sixteenth Street
bridge over Piney Branch Road).
Powell had selected the quarry site for Holmes' research for the light it
might shed on the Paleolithic issue. Powell had for many years been wander­
ing over the area looking at what were then believed to be "Paleolithic" tools
(Powell 1895). He claimed to have recognized them as "strangely like the
forms found near the Shoshoni village site" but did not pursue the matter
until it became apparent that the gravels in which the tools were found
belonged to the Cretaceous system (Powell 1895 :4). At that point' 'the prob­
lem assumed still greater importance, for if these vestiges of the work of man
were actually deposited in the gravels at the time of their formation as shore
accumulations, then the age of man must be carried back to Cretaceous
time" (Powell 1895:4).
With a mandate from Powell, Holmes began his work at Piney Branch
(see Figure 1.1) in September 1889, and in an article for the January 1890
American Anthropologist, published his preliminary results. After an ex­
tended discussion of the site, quarrying, manufacturing, and the form of
materials occurring in quarries, he drew in the Paleolithic problem. On the
assumption that every implement must pass through the same stages of
16 DAVID J. MELTZER
Figure 1.1. William Holmes at the Piney Branch quarry, Washington, D.C., circa 1890.
Holmes labeled this photograph: "Holmes in an ocean of the paleoliths of Abbott,
Putnam, Wilson and the rest of the early enthusiasts of American antiquities. All are
merely refuse of Indian implement making."(Photograph courtesy of the National
Museum of American Art [formerly National Collection of Fine Arts], Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D.C.)
aevelopment (an assumption current in European circles [Pitt-Rivers 1875],
although Holmes made no connection), Holmes concluded that one could
not use the relative "rudeness" of a tool to tell time (Holmes 1890:13). Fur­
ther, he suggested that the so-called turtle-backs, hallmarks of Abbott's
Paleolithic age, were in reality rejects marking one of the stages of manufac­
ture and not implements. All this was couched in the terminology of the BAE
line, with Holmes arguing that the occupations were neither of great an­
tiquity nor discontinuous (Holmes 1890:20) and that ethnic, chronologic, and
cultural evidence all "point to the Indian as the laborer in these quarries"
(Holmes 1890:25).
Word of Holmes' paper, delivered initially as a lecture to the An­
thropological Society of Washington in November 1889, spread quickly. Lu­
cien Carr, assistant curator under Putnam at the Peabody Museum, wrote
Henry Henshaw, then editor of the American Anthropologist, in December
1889. He noted that Holmes' finds did not
affect the general question of the antiquity of man , except so far as this particular find was
used to prove it. There are others and if human evidence can prove it how are you going to
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 17
get around the Trenton gravels and California cement wh[ere] implements of human
workmanship have been found? The only way to discredit them is to say "the boy lied"
[Carr to Henshaw, December 2, 1889, BAE, NAA].
Other reactions were more excited. Abbott, apparently puzzled by the
unexpected appearance of criticism, fired off his own letter to Henshaw:
"Will you please get me a copy of Holmes(?) paper on the Paleolithic!!!
finds near Washington?" (Abbott to Henshaw, February 20, 1890, BAE,
NAA). If in 1890 Abbott was unsure who Holmes was or what he was up to
with the Paleolithic, he certainly found out shortly thereafter. The literature
in the decade after 1890 records Holmes' systematic examination of all
quarry and alleged Paleolithic sites in eastern North America, including Ab­
bott's Trenton gravels (see Holmes 1893a,b,d,e).
That fieldwork rested on a theoretical foundation set out in an article for
Science in 1892. There, Holmes restated his argument that all tools passed
through a single sequence of manufacture, from the basic cobble in the
quarry to the finished arrowhead, spear, drill, or knife. In the process, the
initially crude item becomes progressively more refined. If one found an ob­
ject that had been rejected early on in the manufacturing process, it would
appear rude and reminiscent of older European tools. Holmes, like many of
his contemporaries in natural history (Gould 1977), w'as influenced by the
dictum that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny (see especially Holmes' [1894J
article on the natural history of stone tools).
As Wilmsen (1965) observes, the reasoning here is dubious, but it meant
one had to be careful in selecting the analogues for the rude American im­
plements: "The critical observer will find ... that this [European-AmericanJ
resemblance is superficial, and that they [rude toolsJ have a much closer
analogy with the rude quarry shop rejects of America" (Holmes 1892:296).
Further, it was necessary to separate arguments on the grade of culture from
arguments on the age of the material: The extant Stone Age tribes
demonstrated the fallacy of assuming that "rude" forms indicated great
antiquity.
Holmes' paper appeared in the same year as G. Frederick Wright's Man
and the Glacial Period (Wright 1892b). This volume differed little in either
style or substance from Wright's previous work on the topic (Wright 1889)
and was meant only to summarize his recent research in Europe and on the
Pacific coast and the relation of man to North American and British glacia­
tion (Morison 1971 :247-248). Unlike the earlier volume, however, Man and
the Glacial Period set off a wave of vituperative criticisms and triggered an
acrimonious debate.
Wright himself was puzzled by the reaction, noting that when he had writ­
ten the book there had seemed to be a "general acceptance of all the facts
 ---
18 DAVID J. MELTZER
detailed in it which directly connect man with the glacial period" (Wright
1895:xiii). It had not seemed necessary to fortify his statements because
scientists like McGee had already endorsed the evidence in a' 'most emphatic
manner" (Wright 1895 :xvi; see McGee 1888). As Hart (1976) and Morison
(1971) have so clearly demonstrated, Wright's (I 892b) volume was a victim
of changing times, and had Wright been more observant or less trusting, he
would have foreseen the impending confrontation.
Throughout the decade of the 1880s, Wright's relations with his colleagues
at the USGS were steadily deteriorating, for both personal (Morison
1971 :267-268) and professional reasons (Hart 1976: 177). Wright held to the
increasingly unpopular thesis that there had been a single glacial advance in
North America, a strategic blunder given that his major opposition was his
immediate supervisor, Thomas Chamberlin, the chief of the glacial division
of the USGS (Hart 1976:172-178).
Chamberlin had critical words for Wright when The Ice Age in North
America (Wright 1889) was published, but these were expressed privately in
a letter (later printed in Chamberlin 1893; see Hart 1976: 184). In fact, the
public reaction to Wright's 1889 volume was favorable (Morison 1971 :227­
228), with silence emanating from the USGS quarter. Powell for one later
claimed that the feeling among survey members was that Wright's book
would soon pass into obscurity and hence, was not worthy of their notice
(Powell 1893).
This proved not to be the case. The Ice Age in North America sold out
within the first year and was to go through multiple editions (Morison
1971:228). Thus encouraged, Wright published his 1892 version, and with
this volume overcame the collective patience of the USGS scientists.
Chamberlin in particular was determined to make his differences with
Wright public (Chamberlin 1892, 1893) and bring down on Wright the full
pressure of government geologists and archaeologists. To facilitate this, he
enlisted the aid of McGee, writing him in "righteous indignation" over the
whole affair (McGee to Chamberlin, October 15, 1892, McGee Papers, LC).
McGee was the likely candidate to serve as the point man in the attack on
Wright since he had recently converted to the government position on the
early man issue. Like most individuals who have sacrificed strongly held
opinions, McGee became more fervent in his newfound beliefs than those
(like Holmes) who had not suffered through the difficulty of rejecting
previously held theories. Perhaps more importantly, McGee had the
temperament suited to carry the controversy for the government side (see
Swanton n.d.; Judd 1967). McGee answered Chamberlin's call, agreeing
that "the sooner geologists (other than myself-l have long been awake)
awaken to the necessity of stamping Wright as a pretender incompetent to
observe, read or reason, and devoid of sound moral sense, the better it will
---------~_.- ­
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 19
be for the world" (McGee to Chamberlin, November 11, 1892, McGee
Papers, LC).
McGee began with a letter to Science (McGee 1892), suggesting certain
emendations to Brinton's (1892) "otherwise excellent review" of Wright's
book. Brinton had opened his review in Science by referring to Wright as one
of the foremost glacialists in the country, and McGee took umbrage (Brinton
1892:249). Clothing his attack in the rhetoric of the "New Geology," and
appealing to the "discriminating genius of Chamberlin," McGee chastised
Wright's adherence to the single-ice-advance hypothesis and along the way
took swipes at the competence and character of the Reverend Wright. The
fact that Wright had listed himself as a member of the Geological Survey
(correctly, as it turns out; see Morison 1971 :268 and Rabbitt 1980:216)
proved especially offensive to McGee and Chamberlin. (The latter wrote to
Wright's publishers to find out when the book had gone to press to deter­
mine whether Wright had the opportunity to revise his title page [see
Morison 1971:269)).
McGee's letter to Science was rather restrained compared with the review
published a few months later in the American Anthropologist. In that review
McGee attacked Wright's geology, largely by parrotting the points
Chamberlin raised in his review (Chamberlin 1892) and then summarized
Wright's evidences of glacial man as a "tissue of error and misinterpreta­
tion" (McGee 1893b:94). After a series of ad hominem comments directed
toward Wright, McGee concluded his review by referring to Wright as a
"betinseled charlatan whose potions are poison. Would that science might
well be rid of such harpies" (McGee 1893b:95).
McGee published one further caustic review in the Literary Northwest
(McGee 1893a). No less libelous than its predecessor, the review was first re­
jected by the editors of The Nation, then by Goldthwaite's Geographical
Magazine, then by Newton Winchell, editor of the American Geologist.
Winchell in turn forwarded the review to the Literary Northwest, a new
magazine, perhaps in need of copy (McGee to The Nation, December 13,
1892; McGee to/from N. Winchell, December 22-26, 1892; McGee Papers,
LC).
Hart (1976) and Morison (1971) have tracked the reaction to McGee's
reviews within government circles and found that while many disagreed with
Wright's science, most were disturbed by the personal nature of McGee's at­
tack. The noted invertebrate paleontologist and naturalist-ethnologist
William H. Dall wrote Wright expressing his own reservations about the
evidence for glacial man but decried the' 'personal abuse in scientific discus­
sions" (Dall to Wright March 3, 1893, Dall Papers, SIA). Thomas Wilson,
long a proponent of glacial man, confidentially fed Wright information on
the reception of McGee's review in Washington (Hart 1976:192). Otis
20 DAVID J. MELTZER
Mason-like Wilson, an employee of the U.S. National Museum as well as
president of the Anthropological Society of Washington (which then
published the American Anthropologist)-strongly disapproved of the at­
tack. He asked McGee to assure all concerned that he (Mason) was not
deemed culpable for publication of the review (McGee to Baldwin, May 10,
1893).
Outside the Washington arena, the reactions were markedly less re­
strained. The noted Yale geologist James Dwight Dana, editor of the
American Journal of Science, wrote to Wright that McGee's attack was a
"disgrace to American science" (Morison 1971:280). Judge C. C. Baldwin,
president of the Western Reserve Historical Society (and not incidentally,
the person to whom Wright dedicated Man and the Glacial Period), forged
his own counterattack. He published a "Review Extraordinary" of McGee's
American Anthropologist review, which was essentially a reprint of McGee's
text along with stinging annotations by Baldwin (Baldwin 1893). The main
thrust of Baldwin's rebuttal, aside from ridiculing McGee, was a series of
pointed questions about the nature of McGee's connection with the USGS.
Baldwin, like many of his contemporaries, saw a conspiracy in the work of
the USGS geologists and BAE archaeologists. The then-current suspicion
was that McGee's attack was but another attempt by sanctioned government
science to advance itself at the expense of local and private practitioners
(Keyes 1928). And, for a time, the debate over Wright's book, carried on in
the pages of Science (Abbott 1892a,b, 1893; Haynes 1893a-d; Holmes
1893b; Williams 1893), the American Geologist (see the symposium volume
on the debate, Volume XI, Number 3), and Popular Science Monthly
(Claypole 1893; Powell 1893), inextricably mixed criticisms of the USGS
with a spirited defense of Wright (see Hart 1976: 188-202). At least that is
how Powell saw it (Powell 1893), although his antagonists denied it
(Claypole 1893). . Powell's admittedly revisionist view has been picked up in later discus­
There is certainly reason to accept Powell's position. Since the late 1880s,
his survey had come under increasing criticism. Powell's grand visions for
geological science, and his ability to manipulate successive generations of
congressmen, had enabled him to ram favorable legislation through
sometimes balky Congresses (Swanton n.d.). But to his critics, he had in­
creasingly come to appear as the political boss of "a scientific Tammany
within the government, [one who] intimidated or bought off his opposition,
gained control of the National Academy, and made himself head of a great
scientific monopoly. His bureaus were asylums for Congressmen's sons and
provided sinecures for press agents and pap for college professors" (Stegner
1954:324-325). Moreover, his critics were willing to go public, as evidenced
by the Cope-Marsh feud in the early 1890s (Shor 1974), the controversy over
the nomenclature and locale of the International Geological Congress (Hart
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 21
1976: 111-117), and the explosion in Congress over the Irrigation Survey and
topographic duties of the USGS (Stegner 1954).
powell had spent the better part of 1892 battling for his programs in and
out of Congress without notable success (Rabbitt 1980:206-214). The Panic
of 1893 was on the horizon, and it was an austere year for scientific ap­
propriations all around. Congress, offended by Powell's secretive and
cavalier use of the USGS budget, cut that budget in half (Morison 1971 :306;
Stegner 1954). By this time Powell, ill over the winter of 1892-1893 and
slowly easing himself out of the directorship of the USGS, took it upon
himself to make a defense of his survey and answer his critics on the
Wright-McGee matter (Hart 1976:198).
He went to great lengths to explain the history and work of the survey dur­
ing his directorship, painting a glowing picture of its successes and the
camaraderie between federal and private geologists. He did observe that oc­
casionally some geologists did not fit into this Elysian scene and that G. F.
Wright was one of them. Wright's own fault, according to Powell, was his
incompetence and unwillingness to change with changing views of science
(i.e., Wright would not accept the multiple glaciation thesis of the USGS or
the BAE's view on early man). More to the point, when Wright published
Man and the Glacial Period, he had produced a book that' 'would do harm"
(Powell 1893:325). And for that reason, Wright's "fellow workers" had
criticised the book in various scientific journals, all intending to warn the
public. What Powell found particularly galling was that when Wright
responded to these criticisms, he cried persecution by the official geologists
of the United States. According to Powell, Wright's critics were "fellow
workers in the field," "professorial geologists like himself" (Powell
1893:325). Wright had, in Powell's opinion, chosen to advocate a scientific
doctrine that had few sympathizers (Powell 1893:326).
sions of the debate (e.g., Mounier 1972:64), but this gives a false picture of
the situation. Wright's defenders were numerous, and, as Morison (1971)
has shown, included a fair number of eminent scientists. The set of papers
published by E. W. Claypole in the American Geologist included many
federal and nonfederal geologists who took a positive or at least dispas­
sionate view of the evidences for glacial man (McGee was invited to con­
tribute a paper to this special volume but declined, citing the "one or two"
reviews he had already published that he described, in classic understate­
ment, as "in no way controversial" [McGee to Claypole, January 7, 1893,
MCGee Papers, LCJ).
Concomitant with the debate over Wright's book, Holmes' long-awaited
S!~dies of the "Paleolithic" sites at Trenton, New Jersey, and in Ohio and
M:lllnesota were published. Holmes' view of McGee in the controversy was
22 DAVID J MELTZER
AN110UITY OF ,"IAN AND AMERIGAN ARCHAEOLOGY 23
fluid. J-Iohnes continued his cordial correspondence to Wright and even
drafted a letter to Wright disassociating him.)elf from McGee, wilo he
claimed had written the review "\,,'ilh the approval of none and without the
knowledge of nearly al!" (Holmes to Wright, undated but likely Apri 11893,
Holmes papers, SIAl. However, he had also been writing ll,l another corre­
spondent. that i..,lcGce was stir'ring up "the animals" at a great rate (Homes to
Branner, February 20, 1892, Haimes papers, 511-\).
Holmes' paper'S (Holmes 1893a-c), including bis own review of 1'v[an and
rhe Glacial Period (Holmes 1893c), are studied exarnpies of apparent objec·
tivity and open-mindedness (Hinsley 1981:107). As Hinsley (1981) has
observed, Holmes approached the matter by confessing his indifferem:e to
tbe outcome of the investigation and c1aimi.ng to be a priori willing to accept
glacial man. But after examining each case, he consistently found tbe
testimony overloaded with inaccuracies that were the relics of the unscien­
tific methods and misleading hypotheses of t he "old archaeology." Holmes
concluded that all Paleolithic finds had been "prematurely announced and
unduly paraded" (Holmes 1893d: 163).
Holmes' 1893 papers mark a shift from.his previous reliance on the quarry
thesis to a depeJJdence on geology (Hart 1976: 162). Arguments that the
alleged Paleolithic tools were ilistoric Native American quarry refuse
worked well on the artifacts found on the surface because the context seemed Figure 1.2. An excursion to the steatite quarry. Clifton, Virginia, circa 1894. Fronlieft
to bespeak a recent deposition. For artifacts fOllnd in the purpQrted glacial to right: Anita McGee (seated), WJ McGee, Margaret Hetzel (the owner of the site),
gravels, Holmes and his colJeagues (particularly 1'vh.:Gec, Chamberlin, and David Day. Otis Mason (seated, with stick), William Holmes (with elbow propped on
Salisbury) argued I hat the objects had been on the surface i.n recent times but rocks). unidentified man, and Rollin Salisbury (with umbrella).(Photograph courtesy
that due to factors like slumping, tbe uprootLng of trees, and rodent burrm.. . ­ of the National Museum of American Art [fol'merly National Collection of Fine
Artsl, Smithsonian Institution. Washington, D. C.)
ing, they had been incorporat.ed ijl older strata at greater depths (see Holmes
1893a,d) (see Figure 2.1). "In those instances where the geoJogical context proach, whil.:h Abbott saw as' 'something that must by proved at all hazards;
seemed sound, Holmes changed his strategy and cast aspersions on the col­ or if not demonstrated, foisted upon the unthinking to sel.:ure the scientific
lector (Holmes 1893e). The attjlude among the BAE and USGS scientists, prominence of a few archaeological mugwumps" (Abbol! 1893:122).
and this heJd true th rough the first two decades of this century (Holmes 19 J9; Because the defenders of early man \'iere not about 10 back down, it is incor­
Hrdlicka J907, 1918), was thatif any possibility of intrLlsion existed, if there rect to suggest that "by the end of the 19th century [the RAE-USGS} views
were any instances where more modern Native American material could had been accepted" (Mounier 1972:64, see also Judd 1967). Of those who
have been incorporated into more ancient deposits, then the evidence had to supported gJacial man prior to the 18905, on Iy a few changed 1heir opinions
be considered ill valid. as a result of Holmes' arguments.
As expected, the proponents of early man were unconvinced by the
The differences between the two sides of the early man issue were largely
arguments and assertions of' the federal scientists (see Abbott 1892a,b, 1893; irreconcilable, and the proponents of each spelll much of their time talk.ing
Hayne,; 1893a-d; Wright 1892a,c, 1893). They suggested in turn that past one another (Spencer 1979; see also Fowke 1902; Moorehead 1910). The
sct:narios of intrusion or redeposition of younger material into older strata ballies of the 1890s were not decisive victories for the BA.E camp. Rather,
were irrelevant in the absence of empirical evidence for that process. They they introduced an element of caution to the previously unrestrained theoriz­
further argued that analogies of Native American artifacts with Paleolithic ing of the proponents of early man. Aft.er the government outburst. it was no
tools were inappropriate since they misrepresented the actual nature of the
lange.r possible to accept unchallenged apparent morphological analogues
American Paleolithic artifacts. Finally, they took issue with the HAE ap­
between European and American implements as a basis for a common

24 DAVID J. MELTZER
Paleolithic tradition. And, no longer was the description "material found in
the drift" sufficient in and of itself to rectify claims of an object being
Pleistocene in age. But because the BAE analogues between the American
"Paleolithic" tools and Native American manufacturing rejects were not
recognizably more correct than the Paleolithic analogues, and because the
glacial geology of the gravels and drift was still in flux, it was equally im­
possible to prove the absence of a Pleistocene-aged occupation.
Without unequivocal evidence supporting either position, the lines in the
debate were drawn according to theoretical disposition. And as Hinsley has
demonstrated, theoretical predisposition largely followed institutional lines
(Hinsley 1976). The BAE as an institution had its own code of scientific con­
duct (Hinsley 1976:50-51), but this was an internal code, limited to those on
the government payroll. When attacked or attacking, the BAE and USGS
scientists had to resort to more commonly recognized strategies. This, as
Hinsley points out, is the significance and source of McGee's actions:
George Wright had, like McGee and Holmes, achieved his geological credentials with field
experience; in addition, he possessed vastly more formal education than the Survey men.
On what grounds, then, were they authorities and he a fraud? These questions the
Washington corps attempted to answer by slander and storm because the nature of
Washington science [and archaeology generally] left no other means of determining status
[Hinsley 1976:50-51].
As Thomas Wilson complained to Putnam, the "whole affair depends upon
the faith and credit given [the investigator]" (Wilson to Putnam, January 3,
1900, Putnam Papers, HU). Abbott, unable to effectively counter the
charges of the government scientists using common theoretical-empirical
principles, resorted to doggerel in the pages of Science (Abbott 1892b:345,
1893: 123).
Without an agreed-upon set of rules and theories governing the discipline,
archaeology at the turn of the century was forced into becoming an arena
where competition among theories was eclipsed by competition among in­
dividuals, institutions, and modes of doing science (Brinton 1895).
The struggle over the American Paleolithic must also be seen in the context
of two important currents in late-nineteenth-century science. The BAE was
consciously attempting to create a professional science in its own image
(Darnell 1969)-one based on an evolutionary model that incorporated ar­
chaeology within anthropology. BAE scientists allied themselves with select
"professionals" in other disciplines and claimed for themselves similar
status. The American Anthropologist, which was as much a house organ and
showcase of the BAE as its Annual Reports series, was already in 1892
"coming to be more and more a representative journal of our national work
in the field of anthropology" (Starr 1892:306). And the BAE influence
spilled over into the pages of Science and the Journal of Geology, both of
,
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 25
which were already prominent on a national scale. Even when, for example,
the prestigious Loubat prize was offered in 1897 for the best work in ar­
chaeology for the preceding five years, the award went to a BAE scientist
(Holmes), largely on the judgment of another BAE scientist (McGee). The
BAE power within the nascent profession was as real as it was apparent.
In addition to the drive toward professionalization, the BAE also
represented anew, wholly American approach to science. The early man
debate was an undisguised struggle over the primacy and relevance of Euro­
pean science. As was common in many disciplines coming into power in the
final decades of the nineteenth century, there was an aggressive core of scien­
tists carefully scrutinizing and criticizing European ideas and influences. In
their exuberance, BAE archaeologists even suggested that one of the reasons
why American prehistorians found resemblances to European paleoliths was
that most of the European gravel implements were "doubtless the rejects of
manufacture" as well (Holmes 1893a:30, see also McGuire 1893, Powell
1895). This is the larger meaning of Mason's characterization of Boucher de
Perthes as the Abbott of France (see the quotation opening this section).
As Cyrus Thomas' obituary noted, his was a typically American career
(Anonymous 1910). Thomas, and BAE scientists generally, were born and
bred in the sparsely settled Midwest, earned their scientific credentials in the
Great Plains and canyons of the Far West, and came to Washington with a
science and philosophy attuned to that experience (an issue thoroughly ex­
plored in Lacey 1979). Their ideas on science fit perfectly within what a
young contemporary of theirs at the University of Wisconsin was calling
"the frontier experience," one that left "small regard or appreciation for the
best Old World experience" (Turner 1962:210, original 1896). The BAE
scientists began the slow process of demonstrating the uniqueness of the
North American archaeological record. The basic ambiguity of that record,
and the still unstructured state of the discipline, left the matter unresolved.
And it was at that stage when Ales Hrdlitka arrived on the scene and ad­
dressed the early man question from the skeletal evidence.
EARLY MAN IN AMERICA: WHAT HAVE THE BONES
TO SAY?
When you came back to Hrdlicka he was always there, just
where the Lord created him, on the rock of ultimate Hrdlickian
knowledge.
J. Swanton n.d.:39
ll907
.
The human skeletal material that was to figure in the early man debates of
the nineteenth and twentieth century began appearing in the 1840s (Hrdlitka
l ' but discussion of its bea,;ng on the antiquity issue was initially
26 DAVID J MELTZER
!
ANTiQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY
devoted only to questions of context. Of primary importance was the
demonstration that the bones were not intrusive in Pleistocene-aged
deposits. Thomas Wilson's early chemical tests of fossilization (Wilson
1892) and his pioneering use of the fluorine test to determine the contem­
poraneity of the remains of human and extinct mammals (Wilson 1895) are
manifestations of this research.
During the debates of the 1890s on the American Paleolithic, skeletal
evidence was generally ignored or lost in the haggling about tool types and
geological formations. With the appearance of human limb bones in the
Trenton gravels and the slightly earlier discovery of Dubois' Pithecan­
thropus, the skeletal evidence took on a greater significance. Because of the
antiquity he assigned to the Trenton gravels, Abbott for one believed that
Volk's discovery of a human femur in those deposits was "next in impor­
I which it was discovered (Dr. H. B. Collins, 1981, personal communication).
tance to the discovery of the missing link in Java" (Abbott to Putnam, April
22, 1899, in Dexter 1971).
I·
Cranial elements had previously come from the Delaware Valley and been
analyzed in the fall of 1898 by Frank Russell, a research assistant of
Putnam's at the Peabody Museum (Russell 1899). Russell had found little to
support Putnam's thesis that the material was of great antiquity, citing the
questionable geological context of the finds and their apparent similarity to
crania of the local Lenape tribe of Native Americans. Putnam was not
altogether satisfied with this analysis (see Putnam to Mason, March 7, 1900,
Mason papers, NAA), and with his hopes raised by Volk's finds in 1899, he
was determined not to "make any blunder about it" (Putnam to Volk,
December 13, 1899, in Dexter 1971:3). He decided to turn these newly
discovered remains, along with the previously analyzed cranial elements, to
Ales Hrdlicka (1869-1943), who was then working for Putnam under the
auspices of the Hyde expeditions to the American Southwest (Spencer 1979).
Having access to a greater collection of Lenape skeletal material than was
available to Russell, Hrdli~ka's analysis of the Trenton skeletal remains was
on a firmer comparative basis. While he concluded that nearly all of the
skeletal material was from the local Lenape tribe, he indicated that two
skulls were of a type totally distinct from Lenape or other known (save
Apache) Native American tribes (Hrdli~ka 1902:56). Hrdli~ka, admittedly
perplexed by those skulls, refused to speculate on their possible antiquity.
However, he did suggest that if the crania were not intrusive, then one had to
tentatively accept them as evidence of a pre-Lenape race in the Valley, in
which case, their antiquity became wholly a matter of geology (Hrdli~ka
1902:57; Hay 1919).
This was Hrdli~ka's first foray into the early man debate, and it typifies
the cautious and conservative approach he would take to the antiquity ques­
tion throughout his life. It was only later, and especially after the tides of
27
opinion began to change, that his caution came increasingly to be perceived
as dogmatism. In fact, Hrdli~ka's role in the early man controversy has
taken on nearly legendary dimensions, and more often than not he is vilified
for preventing the acceptance of man's antiquity (Clewlow 1970). He was, in
Hooton's imagery, Horatio guarding the metaphorical bridge of great an­
tiquity (Hooton 1937: 102).
There is, of course, a great deal of truth to this and the other apocryphal
tales surrounding Hrdli~ka. He was, in his empirical efforts, almost entirely
at the mercy of his theoretical presuppositions. For this reason, it was not
unlike him to arbitrarily assign skeletal material to the "correct" geological
strata on the basis of its morphology and not on the basis of the stratum in
At the same time, Hrdli~ka's theoretical program was extremely sophisti­
cated and broad in approach (Spencer 1979 is the best single source on this
issue), and his position in the North American early man debates was bound
up in his larger understanding of the evolutionary history of man (Spencer
and Smith 1981). As Hrdlicka argued, in light of
present scientific views regarding man's evolution, the anthropologist has a right to expect
that human bones, particularly crania, exceeding a few thousand years in age, and more
especially those of geologic antiquity, shall present marked morphological differences,
and that these differences shall point in the direction of more primitive forms [HrdliCka
1912:2].
The first systematic expression of Hrdli~ka's views was in the context of
the discovery of a site in Lansing, Kansas, in the early 1900s. The remains of
two humans were found during excavation of a cellar tunnel on a farm
(Holmes 1902a). The bones were embedded in loess, and, predictably, there
were conflicting views on the source of the loess. Advocates of early man
suggested that the loess was derived directly from the ice front in the valleys
north of the site. The opposing camp-with Holmes, Chamberlin, and
Salisbury among their number-argued that the loess was secondarily
deposited in recent times from older loess on neighboring slopes. Holmes
also had the crania examined, which seemed to reveal that there was a close
Correspondence "in type with crania of the historic Indians of the general
region. It presents no unique features and offers no suggestion of great age
or of inferior organization" (Holmes 1902a:744).
Hrdli~ka (Figure 1.3) independently had examined the Lansing locality in
!902, and when he and the Lansing remains both settled at the Smithsonian
In 1903, he studied the remains in more detail. After an analysis using the
comparative collections held by the museum, Hrdli~ka confirmed his in­
tuitive reaction that the skeleton was quite typical of the large majority of the
 r
28 DAVID J. MELTZER
Figure 1.3. AleS HrdliCka, just after he arrived at the Smithsonian Institution, circa
1903.(photograph courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian
Institution, Photo No. 4816.)
present Native Americans of the Middle and Eastern states (Hrdli~ka
1903:328; W. Wedel, however, after a reexamination of the Lansing crania
in 1954 concluded they were more like those of older ceramic or preceramic
groups [Wedel 1959:91-93]. The 14C date of 4750 ± 250 B.P. run on the
bone bears Wedel out [the date, M-1890, was run byH. Crane, University of
Michigan Phoenix Project, and is published here courtesy of Dr. J. B. Grif­
fin]).
The apparent similarity between Holmes' and Hrdli~ka's approaches and
conclusions regarding the Lansing skeletons is the key Stewart (1949) uses to
argue that after 1903 Hrdli~ka, previously in Putnam's employ, was
significantly swayed by Holmes' views on the antiquity issue. Stewart, in
fact, further infers that had Hrdli~ka stayed under Putnam, his subsequent
role in the early man debate might have been significantly different. Spencer
(1979), on the other hand, argues that Hrdli~ka's position on the Lansing
evidence was entirely in line with all of his work up to that point on the mor­
phological variation in human populations. For Hrdli~ka, human mor-
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 29
phology was the result of the interplay between the potentiality of heredity
and the environment (Hrdli~ka 1912). That interaction led to gradual but
profound changes through time in body structure. In a general sense, for
Hrdli~ka, morphological changes were the hands on the evolutionary clock.
The responsibility of those who would claim great antiquity for human fossil
remains was to demonstrate that the fossils were more distinct or of a lower
grade than the recent or modern Native American remains (Hrdli~ka 1907).
This theoretical stance, which has since been given the label morphological
dating (Stewart 1949; Smith 1977) does match in a general sense Holmes' ap­
proach to the antiquity issue. However, while Stewart (1949) rightly sees the
two as similar, the correlation should not be taken as a causal connection.
Hrdli~ka's ideas were developed independently of Holmes' (Spencer 1979),
but perhaps because his strategy and conclusions fit so well with Holmes'
own views, we have the reason why Holmes was so anxious to hire Hrdli~ka
for the Smithsonian. Importantly, Hrdli~ka's perspective could never square
particularly well with Putnam, who disagreed with the basic premise of
Hrdli~ka's arguments: "the fact that 'Kansas Man' had a skull form like
some of the Indians only means to me that the Indian type in N. Am. is older
than some have supposed, but [this] has been my view for a long time as you
may well know" (Putnam to Hrdlicka, February 5, 1907, Hrdlicka papers,
NAA).
Hrdli~ka refined his notions on morphological dating in the years after the
Lansing analysis and incorporated them in a larger study of the skeletal re­
mains found in all of North America (Hrdli~ka 1907). Within his theoretical
framework, claims for antiquity had to exhibit (1) indisputable strati­
graphical evidence; (2) some degree of fossilization of the bones; and (3)
marked serial somatological distinctions in the more osseous parts (Hrdli~ka
1907:13). After having examined the 14 cases in North America that at that
time purported to date to the Pleistocene, it was apparent to Hrdli~ka that
the last criterion was sufficient: "It has been seen that, irrespective of other
considerations, in every instance where enough of the bone is preserved for
comparison, the somatological evidence bears witness against the geological
antiquity of the remains and for their close affinity to or identity with those
of the modern Indian" (Hrdli~ka 1907:98).
By 1912, when Hrdli~ka published his Early Man in South America, he
had expanded his criteria for establishing antiquity. In order to demonstrate
that human bones were geologically ancient, one had to prove (1) that the
specimens were found in geologically ancient deposits, (2) that the age of the
deposits was confirmed by paleontological remains, (3) that the bones
presented evidence of organic as well as inorganic alterations, (4) that the
bones showed morphological characteristics referable to an earlier type and
 .,.
30 DAVID J MELTZER
(5) that the human remains were not introduced in later times (Hrdlitka
1912:2). As might have been expected, the fourth criterion was the crucial
one since any human remains that did not present marked differences from
those of modern man would be regarded on morphological grounds as "in­
significant geologically" (Hrdlicka 1912:3).
With these prescriptions and his analysis of virtually all alleged evidence
for great antiquity in both of the Americas, Hrdlitka reported that, without
exception, no bones or artifacts were unequivocally glacial in age and none
of the osteological materials was outside the range of the modern Native
Americans (Spencer and Smith 1981 :439). Hrdlitka concluded that the
migration from the Old to the New World followed the Neanderthal phase of
man and likely took place in Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene time (which,
Spencer and Smith [1981] observe, Hrdlitka took to mean anytime between
70,000 and 20,000 years B.P. But see the estimates given in Hrdlitka [1925]).
Hrdlitka's conclusions are certainly not unreasonable, and later
developments have proven him correct in many important respects. But
there was continual ambiguity over the early man issue, particularly in the
teens and twenties of this century. The ever-increasing discoveries of fossil
hominids, compounded by the appearance of Piltdown Man, left interpreta­
tions of human history open to debate. And because Hrdlitka took a view of
human history that left him in an ever-shrinking minority, his role too came
under attack. Those who did not share Hrdlitka's belief that Homo sapiens
was a recent species were free to speculate with the evidence that linked man
with the Pleistocene aged fauna and ignore the possible implications of a
mid-Pleistocene occupation and the attendant human somatype. As a conse­
quence, like the controversy 20 years previously, the two sides of the early
man issue again found themselves talking past one another. In this regard,
the debate over the finds at Vero, Florida, is instructive.
The Vero locality, on the Atlantic Coast of Florida, was discovered in
1913 and brought to the attention of Florida state geologist, E. H. Sellards,
at the end of the year. In the fall of 1915 and the spring of 1916 human
skeletal remains were found associated with extinct Pleistocene vertebrates
(Sellards 1916). With those discoveries, Sellards wrote Hrdlitka inviting him
to visit the site (Sellards to Hrdlitka, July 17, 1916, Hrdlitka papers, NAA).
Hrdlitka, always willing to investigate claims for early man, accepted the of­
fer, but cautioned Sellards that "human burials may be made in almost any
strata that can be worked, and isolated human remains may be introduced
into such strata in many different ways" (Hrdlitka to Sellards July 20, 1916,
Hrdlitka 'papers, NAA).
The issue of burials was raised by Hrdlitka for a very specific reason. In
the event skeletal morphology suggested th~'lt the remains were recent-as it
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 31
invariably did for Hrdlitka-but the geological context was ancient, one had
to account for the bones being intrusive. To do so, Hrdlitka had lately
created a scenario to show the probability of intrusion occurring. Humans,
he suggested, had been burying their dead since Neanderthal times. In
America, given, say, 4000 years of pre-Columbian occupation (Hrdlicka's
own estimate), this meant that the number of burials on the continent might
reach two billion. With that "vast array of possibilities," it was better in all
instances to begin by assuming that all remains were intrusive rather than
discovered in situ (Hrdlitka n.d.).
Hrdlitka left Washington and arrived at Vera on Saturday, October 25,
1916. He was joined there by Rollin Chamberlin (a geologist, standing in for
his father, T. C. Chamberlin), geologist T. Wayland Vaughan, archaeolo­
gist George Grant MacCurdy, and paleontologist Oliver Hay. The group ex­
amined the terrain and cleaned stratigraphic profiles, with Hrdlitka grilling
the local men who had found the human fossils and visiting a nearby burial
mound to gather a comparative collection (Hrdlitka to Holmes, November
9, 1916, Hrdlitka papers, NAA).
The results of the visit were published in a special number of the Journal
of Geology (Sellards et al., 1917), with a more expanded discussion by
Hrdlitka appearing a year later (Hrdlitka 1918). Hrdlitka's criticism of the
Vero find touched on familiar points. He complained that some of the
human bones had been removed from their context before anthropologists
had had the opportunity to examine them. Aside from the difficulties this
presented in reconstructing the context of the bones, the action was irksome
since it meant that the finds had already received "wide publicity" (Hrdlitka
1918:35). Secondly, he noted the slight probability that human bones, when
left upon the surface, would be incorporated intact in a slowly forming
geological stratum. After all, most of the bones would have been "broken,
scattered, gnawed by animals, weathered, split, moss-eaten or root-eaten"
(Hrdlitka 1918:35-36).
Ignore Hrdlitka's previous argument that man had continually intruded
his graves into older strata and consider his next argument: He claimed that
since the bones at Vero showed such excellent preservation, they clearly had
to have been a recent burial. As the old saying goes, Hrdlitka wanted to have
his cake and eat it too. He argued that early peoples (of geological antiquity)
left their bodies on the surface where various destructive forces acted on the
bones; later peoples buried their dead in geologically ancient strata. This
~eant, at least to Hrdlitka, that if one found a skeleton in geologically an­
Cient strata, it had to be a recent inclusion because human skeletal remains
Would not last in Pleistocene-aged strata.
Hrdlitka's analysis of the skull and postcranial elements revealed that the
32 DAVID J. MELTZER
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY
material was Native American, of a type found among the eastern Algon­
quian or among the Sioux (Hrdlitka 1918:55). Again, like the case with the
Lansing skull, the veracity of Hrdlitka's reconstruction and interpretation
of the Vero material has been shown to be seriously flawed (see Stewart
1946). With his analysis of the skeletal material and his observations from
the site, Hrdlitka concluded that Vero was an ordinary habitation site con­
taining two burials (Hrdlitka in Sellards et al., 1917:48).
After a careful examination of the local geology, Rollin Chamberlin
(1917) concluded that the human bones were associated with the extinct
Pleistocene mammals. Unlike Hrdlitka, Chamberlin did not attribute that
association to human burials (for which he found no evidence), rather he
suggested that the extinct fauna had been secondarily deposited in the
stratum. Vaughan (in Sellards et al. 1917) thought the possibility of burial
precluded making any determinations about the contemporaneity of the
fossils and consequently suspended judgement. MacCurdy, after examining
the artifacts and bones, concluded diplomatically that some of the fauna had
been redeposited and some represented late survivals into recent times (Mac­
Curdy 1917a). Hay, the paleontologist, would have none of that: "Did [the
fauna] continue to live there until quite recent times? Our friends the an­
thropologists appear to be willing to believe this. The writer holds that the
view is wholly wrong" (Hay 1918b: 13). For Hay, the fauna was Pleistocene
in age, and likely middle Pleistocene or Aftonian. The human bones, which
he felt were not intrusive, were thus of comparable age.
There are a couple of noteworthy points about this discussion, aside from
the fact that none of the investigators could agree on the meaning of the
evidence from the site. All the scientists, excepting Hrdlitka, argued that the
issue at hand was the validity of the association between the human and
mammal remains. None, excepting Hrdlitka, paid a great deal of attention
to the bones themselves. Oliver Hay was thus either oblivious to the mor­
phological implications of the cranial elements being middle Pleistocene in
age or (and I suspect this is more likely), perceived human history in a man­
ner different from Hrdlitka. And as a consequence, skeletal morphology
was simply a moot issue.
For these reasons, in the debate that followed each position was simply
repeated, and little ground was gained or lost (Chamberlin 1919; Hay 1918b;
MacCurdy 1917b; Sellards 1917). Hay, however, did take the opportunity to
vent his opinion of Hrdlitka's science. He criticized Hrdlitka's untested
presumption that all skeletal elements in Pleistocene deposits had to have
been intrusive burials (Hay 1918c), carped about Hrdlitka's imperious
dismissal of geological tests that falsified the evidence from skeletal remains,
and-striking directly at the suggestion that all bone will be disassociated
r
33
and fragmented due to stress, root action, and the like-Hay noted with evi­
dent sarcasm, "Perhaps we get a clue here to the reason why civilized people
nail up their dead in good strong boxes" (Hay 1918a:460).
But the one aspect of Hrdlitka' s position that neither Hay nor most of his
other contemporaries questioned was the utilization of morphological dating
(Wissler 1916). Stewart (1949) and Smith (1977) point out that Hrdlitka de­
pended on morphological dating to the extent that it took precedence over
reliable geological data. Notwithstanding the validity of that strategy, it was
not overtly a matter of debate until the 1930s (Hooton 1930, 1937).
Stewart has suggested that morphological dating was insulated from
criticism by the complementary lines of evidence (geological and ar­
chaeological) that seemed to support the data from skeletal examinations
(Stewart 1949:14-15). The Vero case is a useful illustration here. But there
are two other issues to consider. First, basic to Hrdlitka's argument was the
belief that the native population of North America was a culturally diverse
yet physically homogeneous racial unit (Hrdlitka 1925). Virtually any
skeleton would fit the accepted range of variation, even it meant taking
skeletal material from Florida and linking it with Algonquian or Siouan
physical types. Having handled more skeletal remains than any of his con­
temporaries, Hrdlitka could assert without notable opposition that a skull of
putative antiquity was within the physical range of the modern Native
American (Stewart 1981; Spencer and Smith 1981).
Second, and equally important, the European fossil record was still in
flux. It was simply not clear what early man was supposed to have looked
like and what morphological changes took place over the millennia. Many,
such as Hooton (1930) and Sir Arthur Keith (Spencer and Smith 1981), saw a
great antiquity for anatomically modern man. Hrdlitka was in a decided
minority in his advocacy of the relatively recent appearance of Homo sa­
piens, following an anatomically distinct Neanderthal phase. In the former
instance, morphological data were irrelevant to the issue of early man in
America; in the latter, a crucial component of the argument and a reasonable
expectation of the fossil record (Smith 1977).
The early man debate was being played out on at least two separate time
scales. There was the European scale, with a deep human past characterized
by significantly different morphotypes and artifact types, and there was an
American scale, with an occupation possibly glacial in age but clearly not on
the magnitude of the European sequence. Hrdlitka defined antiquity in
terms of the European scale, and all his arguments against the American
data were couched in those terms. American archaeologists and geologists
had by this time abandoned the idea of a strictly Paleolithic age in North
America but maintained the likelihood that man had been on the continent
34 DAVID J. MELTZER
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY
for thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of years (Merriam 1924; Wissler
1916). All that was needed was unequivocal evidence, and that was provided
within a decade at a site near Folsom, New Mexico.
THE FOLSOM FINDS
The Folsom discoveries have given us ample chronological
elbowroom, even by Old Warld standards. This is a great relief
to me personally.
A. V. Kidder 1936: 145.
Throughout the teens and twenties of this century, Holmes maintained a
partisan but vicarious role in the early man debates. His contributions were
limited to occasional notes appended to Hrdli1::ka's papers (Hrdli1::ka 1912,
1918) as well as sporadic attacks on early man advocates. When, for exam­
ple, Oliver Hay published his defense of the Vero site and general review of
early man sites in the American Anthropologist (Hay 1918b), Holmes fired
off a rejoinder to Science (Holmes 1918). It revealed that he had about lost
patience with archaeologists who refused to accept his views and geologists
and paleontologists who made forays into the early man field (see also
Hrdli1::ka 1918:60): "It is manifestly a serious duty of the archaeologist and
the historian of man to continue to challenge every reported discovery sug­
gesting the great geological antiquity of the race in America and to expose
the dangerous ventures of little experienced or biased students in a field
which they have not made fully their own" (Holmes 1918:562). Holmes, 30
years after his initial clash with Charles Abbott, still had strong feelings
about the role of amateurs and professionals in the conduct of ar­
chaeological science: "I do not wish for a moment to stand in the way of
legitimate conclusions in this or any other field of research, but illegitimate
determinations have been insinuating themselves into the sacred confines of
science and history" (Holmes 1918:562).
With the publication of Loomis' report on artifacts and Pleistocene mam­
mals from the site at Melbourne, Florida (Loomis 1924; Gidley and Loomis
1926), Holmes again took a public stance in Science with his opposition. And
while he correctly ordained the fate of this site, he had become nearly irra­
tional in his increasingly narrow perception of what constituted good
science. In one particular passage that Wilmsen (1965) has rightly labeled
one of the low points in American archaeology, Holmes caustically re­
marked; "The evidence of Pleistocene man recorded by Loomis at
Melbourne, as well as those obtained by Sellards at Vero, are not only inade­
quate but dangerous to the cause of science" (Holmes 1925:258, emphasis
added).
r
35
In that same volume of Science, scarcely two months later, Harold Cook
published a preliminary report on the Lone Wolf Creek bison kill site. Lone
Wolf Creek was, of course, early Holocene in age, but it was kill sites like it,
although older, that would finally prove the existence of glacial man in
North America. Holmes was aware of Cook's report. Three days after it was
published, he wrote to J. C. Merriam of the Carnegie Institution, asking him
to give Cook's "risky announcement" his prompt attention; Merriam
agreed to look into the matter (Holmes to-from Merriam, November 23 and
27, 1925, Holmes papers, SIA).
The significance of Cook's find was not lost on the larger scientific com­
munity. Pliny Earle Goddard, an ardent Boasian and enemy of Holmes (the
feeling was mutual), rushed into print with an article in Natural History call­
ing attention to Cook's work and defending Loomis' findings. In anticipa­
tion of a favored ploy of Holmes and Hrdli1::ka, he stated that the evidence
was entirely convincing since the finds were made by "museum men and the
formations checked by a competent scientist" (Goddard 1926:259).
All the while, J. D. Figgins and Harold Cook were, in early 1926, visiting a
site near Folsom, New Mexico. Seeing in the site some potential to yield
material similar to that found at Lone Wolf Creek, Figgins sent workers
there with specific instructions to carefully monitor any signs of human an­
tiquity. Evidence was not long in coming. Two points were found in im­
mediate association with bison, a fragment of one directly associated with a
rib bone (Figgins 1927:322). While no entire points were found in situ, the
association of the artifacts with the extinct bison was certain (Cook 1927).
The following summer, when a point was again found, it was left in place
while telegrams were sent out to various Eastern institutions to send represen­
tatives to examine the find.
At that time the first Pecos Conference was in session, and it was there
that a Smithsonian official caught up with BAE archaeologist Frank Roberts
via telegram. Roberts was instructed to proceed to Raton, New Mexico, and
report on the archaeological finds reported from that vicinity (Dorsey to
Roberts, August 31, 1927, BAE, NAA). Two weeks later, he related to
J. Fewkes, then head of the BAE, that he had not the slightest doubt that the
buffalo bones and the projectile points were contemporaneous. After having
Spent a couple of days examining the site for possible intrusions, he con­
cluded that the points had entered the formation at the same time as the
bones had (Roberts to Fewkes, September 13,1927, BAE, NAA). A. V. Kid­
der, he noted, joined him for one of the days and was of the same opinion.
Barnum Brown, representing the American Museum of Natural History,
concurred with their findings (Roberts 1937).
. As Roberts later recalled, he, Brown, and Kidder reported on the Folsom
fInds at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association
36 DAVID J. MELTZER
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY
in December of 1927. According to his recollections, despite the' 'convincing
nature of the evidence, most of the anthropologists continued to doubt the
validity of the discovery" (Roberts 1937:155; see also Wilmsen 1965). The
published record of the meeting does not square with Roberts' account. In
fact, the Association passed a favorable resolution regarding the finds and
called on the USGS to prepare a quadrant map of the site to aid research on
the age of the deposits (Hallowell 1928). Roberts' memory of the reception
of the announcement, written some ten years after the meeting, likely
reflects his reception in Washington rather than at the Andover meeting (Dr.
Henry Collins, 1981, personal communication). Roberts was, after all, an
employee at the Smithsonian along with Holmes and HrdliCka.
HrdliCka had been invited to attend the Andover meeting and present a
paper on his interpretation of early man given the recent finds but declined
the invitation due to previous commitments (Dixon to HrdliCka, November
27, 1927, HrdliCka papers, NAA). HrdliCka did offer the observation that
the Folsom finds interested him and reiterated his proposal for a blue ribbon
panel of scientists to be called in to examine purported discoveries of early
man. This was, to him, the only way that "we can arrive at conclusions that
will command the confidence of every worker" (HrdliCka to Dixon,
December 2, 1927, HrdliCka papers, NAA).
The following spring Hrdlicka did have the opportunity to speak to the
evidence at Folsom, at least indirectly, when he, Barnum Brown, and Nels
Nelson spoke at the New York Academy of Medicine. Hrdlicka reaffirmed
his statement that there was no skeletal evidence in North American that ex­
hibited great antiquity (in the European sense), reiterated his position on the
racial differentiation of the Native American, and then observed that a
whole series of eminent men had looked for early man and found nothing
prior to the Native American (Hrdlicka 1928). In Hrdlicka's opinion, the
problem of early man seemed unresolvable, at least within his generation
(Hrdlicka 1928:807).
Nelson, who followed HrdliCka, disagreed and suggested that the matter
might easily be resolved after an hour or so of discussion (Nelson 1928:822).
Barnum Brown, holding points from the Folsom site, would not even need
an hour: "In my hand I hold the answer to the antiquity of man in America.
It is simply a question of interpretation" (Brown 1928:824, emphasis in
original).
Hrdlicka's reaction to Brown went unrecorded, but four days later, after
his return to Washington, he wrote Brown asking for some slides and more
information. Their exchange is most revealing (all in Hrdlicka papers,
NAA):
[Hrdlicka to Brown, March 15, 1928:] I would ... be glad if you would give me your views
as to how the artifacts may have come into association with the bisons [sic].
r
37
[Brown to Hrdlitka, March 16, 1928:] There is absolutely no possibility of any introduc­
tion of the points subsequent to the natural covering over of the bison skeleton.
[Hrdlicka to Brown, March 19, 1928:] There is only one additional point on which I
should like your opinion and that is, the manner in which the arrow points or darts got into
these places where they were found.
[Brown to Hrdlicka, March 21, 1928:] It is my opinion that, at least, three of these points
were embedded in some part of the flesh of the animals when the carcasses were
entombed .... Please write me further if I have not made the situation clear.
[Hrdlicka to Brown, March 22, 1928:J Thank you for your supplementary letter which is
very satisfactory.
It would be fitting to report that, after being unable to have Brown admit
to possible intrusion at the site, Hrdlicka enthusiastically and wholeheart­
edly endorsed the Folsom evidence. Fitting, perhaps, but not historically ac­
curate. All the same, neither he nor Ho]mes again went on the offensive
against claims for early man. In part, this was due to the nature of the
Folsom finds, which had a little something for everyone. For Hrdlicka the
dating was still sufficiently ambiguous that it could-and ultimately did-fit
within his definition of geologically "recent" time. Moreover, the lack of
skeletal evidence and any dependence on "rude" tools to date the site put
Folsom beyond Holmes' and HrdliCka's purview.
In terms of their specific arguments against the imposition of European
mOdels and sequences on the American data, both Holmes and Hrdlicka
were correct, and nothing in the Folsom site could prove them wrong. On the
mher hand, with Folsom they lost the larger battle over the presence of
"glacial man" on the continent. Folsom exhibited an unequivocal associa­
tion of man and extinct vertebrates, and Holmes, likely recognizing Folsom
as a site that had been found and approved by competent geologists and ar­
chaeologists, simply dropped the matter entirely (Meltzer 1981; although
When writing his 20-volume autobiography in the late 1920s and early 1930s,
he listed his successes against the American Paleolithic proudly-and
rightfully-as one of his major accomplishments. He neglected to mention
the Folsom finds). Hrdlicka similarly shied away from the issue but when
confronted, spoke to the skeletal evidence (Hrdlicka 1937).
It is important to recognize that Holmes and Hrdlicka could take a fair
share of the credit for the acceptance of the Folsom finds, at least indirectly.
It was their dominance in the field for nearly 40 years, and their insistence on
Scientific caution, that led to the eventual appearance of a set of agreed-upon
Controls for determining authentic evidence for man's antiquity. With the'
Folsom finds, their arguments had gone full circle.
In the absence of any negative reaction from either Holmes or Hrdlicka
t~ere remained little if any controversy to be resolved over the Folsom
dISCovery, as there had been at other sites in previous years. For once in the
long battle Over the antiquity of man, the archaeological record had played
38 DAVID J. MELTZER
r
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY
fair, and the evidence was clear. As Dr. Emil Haury recalls the situation:
"The Folsom finds were simply unequivocal evidence of man and extinct
animals, and I think that everybody breathed a sigh of relief that finally what
had been supported was proven" (E. Haury, personal communication,
September 10, 1981. see also Bryan 1937; Gladwin 1937; Kidder 1936).
As a result of the Folsom finds, American archaeology severed its last
links with the European markers for antiquity. It was finally proven that
America had a Pleistocene-aged occupation, but one with a much-refined
Paleolithic tool technology. The search for Abbott's "rude" tools came to a
halt with the discovery of fluted points. Human history was not the same on
both sides of the Atlantic.
ARCHAEOLOGY'S FLAT PAST AND SOME CONCLUSIONS
A. L. Kroeber, looking back in 1952 on the development of American ar­
chaeology, was puzzled by what he perceived as a lack of concern at the turn
of the century for chronological matters. It appeared to him that only in the
late teens had American archaeologists even begun to attack problems of
cultural chronology using strictly archaeological and nondocumentary
methods (Kroeber 1952). This was curious, indeed, since "even explorers as
experienced as Holmes and Fewkes saw their archaeological pasts as com­
pletely flat" (Kroeber 1952: 191). While Kroeber offered no explanation for
the phenomenon, others have suggested that it was the devastating effects of
the Boasian antievolutionary forces that prevented an analytical interest in
cultural change (Willey and Sabloff 1974).
This position holds that the rejection of cultural evolution, which began
with Boas and his students, "forced the American archaeologists into a
niche with a very limited [temporal] horizon" (Willey and Sabloff 1974:86).
It is argued archaeologists succumbed to the Boasians owing to: (I) the lack
of any well-documented, long-term cultural sequence in the New World, ex­
acerbated by the inability of claims for glacial man to withstand careful
scrutiny; (2) the absence of support for significant and major cultural change
within the archaeological record that pertained to Native Americans and
their ancestors; and (3) the lack of a concept of microchange in culture
(Willey and Sabloff 1974:87). Since Americans had none of the major
cultural periods of Europe and because, so it is claimed, they lacked the
stratigraphic method, "they were in no position to rebut the historical par­
ticularists" (Willey and Sabloff 1974:87).
While this explanation rightly calls attention to the problems inherent in
the ambiguous nineteenth-century notion of change, it is marred by some
troublesome facts. As John Rowe has noted (1975), invoking Boas as an ex-
39
planation is anachronistic. Boasian antievolution, which only began to reach
a head in 1909-1916, is used here to explain events that began two decades
earlier in the 1890s. The young Boas may have had an influence on ar­
chaeology in the early 18905, but if he did, few were talking about it. A con­
temporary review of anthropological work in America briefly discusses the
early man controversy but mentions Boas only in connection with his
linguistic and ethnographic work on the Northwest Coast (Starr 1892).
Second, this explanation contends that there was a lack of knowledge of
the stratigraphic method. This ignores the work of Squier and Davis in the
1840s, Wyman and Dall in the 1870s, Holmes in the 1880s, Thomas in the
1880s and 1890s, and even Putnam throughout his career in the Delaware
and Ohio valleys. As Joan Mark rightly observes, the stratigraphic method
was essentially taken for granted in the late nineteenth century (Mark
1980:143), Boas' claims about Gamio notwithstanding.
Lastly, and perhaps most puzzling, this explanation ignores the par­
ticipants in the early man debate. Those most responsible for the studied
disinterest in major cultural change were, as Kroeber observed, men like
Holmes and Fewkes. Their common intellectual bond was the BAE, not
Boas. They were the intellectual progeny of Morgan, each a confirmed
evolutionist (e.g., Holmes 1897, 1902b, 1905, 1919; Hrdli~ka 1912; McGee
1901; see Harris 1968, Wilmsen 1965).
The issue at hand is that these scientists utilized all the methodological and
theoretical tools that Willey and Sabloff (1974) deny them and yet continued
to argue against time depth and cultural change. Although at first glance the
image may seem incongruous, the BAE scientists were evolutionary ar­
chaeologists who practiced historical particularism. This contradiction,
however, may be more apparent than real. As Trigger (1980) argues, the
social sciences of the nineteenth century directed their efforts, either im­
plicitly or explicitly, toward denigrating the accomplishments of Native
Americans. They were, after all, still savages on the lowest rung of Morgan's
progression of mankind. There were no visible signs, as there were in the Old
World, of major societal evolution. When this observation was coupled with
the European view of change (which was perceived in the geological sense of
epochal change), then projected on the sparse American prehistoric record,
the outcome was a perception that Native American cultures were static.
BAE archaeology, and, for that matter, Hrdli~ka's physical an­
thropology, thus started from the assumption that the early inhabitants of
the country were historic Native Americans. "Effort was directed toward
identification of ancient sites with modern tribes; research upon American
prehistory, striking forward rather than back, upward rather than down,
was left without foundation" (Kidder 1936: 145). The past and the present
were not perceived as being qualitatively distinct. This was, as Cyrus
40 DAVID J MELTZER
Thomas hoped, the thread that would lead archaeologists out of the
r
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY
mysterious labyrinth of the past (Thomas 1894:21). But, completing the
metaphor, once out, greater dangers awaited as they did for Theseus at
Minos. By condensing the past into a mirror image of the ethnographic pre­
sent, BAE archaeology became absorbed within ethnology and forfeited its
claim to time. The "flat past" that Kroeber had observed was a predictable
consequence of the government approach to archaeological research, an ap­
proach grounded in a subliminal and denigrating stereotype of the Native
American (Trigger 1980). Boas had little if any influence on the matter.
The "flat past," while inhibiting early man studies to some degree, did
have the beneficial effect of catalyzing debate on a series of archaeological
issues crucial to the development of the discipline. There was, in 1890, a
problem to be solved but no apparent means of reaching a solution and no
idea of what the solution would entail. Arguments based initially on the in­
stitutional affiliation and authority of the individual making the argument
soon gave way to a more clearly defined scientific discussion. And-after 30
years of debate on stone tool technology and typology, glacial geology, and
the relevance of ethnology and analogy in archaeological reasoning-it was
apparent what the solution to the early man debate had to look like. The
rapid acceptance of the Folsom finds attests to that.
The Folsom finds did not result in an antiquity comparable in depth to the
deep past of Europe, but by 1927 it had become obvious that the American
data would never provide that kind of prehistory. In spite of (or perhaps
because of) this, American archaeologists had begun to channel their efforts
into finer scale analyses of chronology. The European perception of change
was replaced with a less epochal view and with the introduction of the seria­
tion method (Kroeber 1916; Spier 1917), the details of the cultural changes
on this continent had begun to be worked out. This was further stimulated by
the Folsom finds in two ways. First, with the expansion of the prehistoric
time scale, the applicability of the ethnographic data and analogues was
restricted to only the latest segments of the prehistoric record. Second, with
the American prehistoric sequence thus anchored firmly in the late
Pleistocene, the challenge became filling in the temporal details between the
oldest and youngest materials. It is not fortuitous that the first large scale
chronologies appear after the Folsom finds (Ford and Willey 1941; Griffin
1946). The battles over early man gave us culture history.
Toward the end of his life, Charles Abbott wrote to Putnam: "I suppose
the archaeologists in the future will steal all my thunder and become
celebrated and I be forgotten, yet you know well enough, I did more than
anyone to put archaeology of this country on a really scientific basis and not
let it remain a mere matter of Indian history" (Abbott to Putnam, December
22, 1912, in Dexter 1971:4).
41
Today the players in the early man controversy are, as Abbott feared,
largely forgotten, or, if remembered, as Hrdlicka is, are known only for
their critical excesses. But when one takes a closer look at these intellectual
forebears, it is apparent that credit is due them for much of the structure of
our profession. These turn-of-the-century archaeologists-some profes­
sionals, many amateurs-had a significant impact on the development of the
discipline, both in the institutional sense of delineating professionals and
amateurs in archaeological science and in the more substantive matters of
defining stone tools, cultural occupations, and cultural change. Abbott
could pass from the scene vindicated since American prehistory is not a
"mere matter of Indian history [ethnohistory]." But then, as Holmes and
Hrdlicka so rightly observed, neither is it, strictly speaking, European
history.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the COurse of this research I have benefited from correspondence and conversations with a
number of the deans of anthropology whose thoughts and recollections have significantly in­
fluenced my understanding of the issues. I would like to thank Drs. Henry B. Collins, John L.
Cotter, James B. Griffin, Emil W. Haury, George I. Quimby, and T. Dale Stewart.
For their collective comments on earlier drafts, I am grateful to the anonymous Advances
reviewers as well as to Drs. Curtis Hinsley, Joan Mark, Tim Murray, Michael B. Schiffer, Bruce
Smith, Frank Spencer, T. Dale Stewart, William C. Sturtevant, Bruce Trigger, and especially
Donald K. Grayson, James B. Griffin, and Jacob Gruber.
The research for this article was generously supported by a Predoctoral Fellowship, Depart­
ment of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution and by a Sigma-Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research.
My task was made simpler by the staffs of the various archives that I visited, particularly the
congenial group at the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.
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 y
6 DAVID J MELTZER
prehistoric populations (e.g., Wilson 1863; see also Gould 1981; Gruber
1981). The second part of the questionnaire was designed to elicit data that
might reveal apparent similarities with European finds and was structured so
as to direct research in a parallel fashion. Gibbs felt that, like archaeological
investigations in Europe, studies of shell beds and caves would take
American archaeology back to a very remote period in aboriginal history
(Gibbs 1862:395).
Gibbs's assumption was not unreasonable. It had long been suggested (by,
among others, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Barton; see Wilmsen 1965),
that there was ample nonarchaeological-geological evidence, such as
linguistic and racial diversity, that seemed to demonstrate the great antiquity
of the Indians on this continent (Haven 1856). With the impetus of the Euro­
pean finds, and with the belief that "there is exact synchronism [of
geological beds] between Europe and America" (Whittlesey 1868:4-5), it
became reasonable to anticipate finding ancient human relics here as well.
Skeletal material that had been found in the earlier decades of the century
was resurrected from the closets of the profession and reexamined. Sir
Charles Lyell himself metaphorically dusted off the Natchez (human) pelvic
bone, alleged to have been found with the bones of an extinct Megatherium,
and candidly admitted that his previous rejection of the association was not
altogether unbiased: "No doubt had the pelvic bone belonged to any recent
mammifer other than man, such a theory [of fortuitous association of the
man and Megatherium] would never have been resorted to" (Lyell 1863:203).
Similarly, Koch's mastodon was reevaluated (Dana 1875), as were Nathaniel
Holmes finds of pottery in connection with a Megatherium, Count Portales'
find of jaws and teeth of man in a "fossilized" condition in Florida, Lund's
work in the caves of Brazil and, of course, the famous skull discovered in a
mine in Calaveras County, California (Foster 1873; MacLean 1875; Wilson
1862; Whitney 1872). Much of this evidence ultimately proved invalid (see
Holmes 1899; Hrdlii::ka 1907; McMillan 1976; but also see Stewart 1951).
But based on this evidence, Foster was led to draw a chart depicting the
"Parallelism as to the antiquity of man in the two hemispheres" (Foster
1873:79-81). For Foster, who took a more radical view than most of his con­
temporaries, these parallels reached back into the Miocene.
Foster also tended to perceive the issue in rather narrow terms, as though
the matter were already largely resolved. Others, particularly Charles Rau
(1826-1887) and Sir Daniel Wilson (1816-1892), who were trained in Euro­
pean prehistory, were more sensitive to the apparent discrepancy between
the records of the two continents. Rau correctly perceived that "we are not
entitled to speak of a North American Paleolithic or Neolithic period. In the
New World the human contemporary of the Mastodon and the Mammoth, it
would seem, was more advanced in the manufacture of stone weapons than
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 7
his savage brother of the European drift period" (Rau 1873:397). He further
cautioned that while flint implements of the drift type were not scarce in
North America, they could not as yet be referred to any particular period
since they and other implements were in use among North American
aborigines in historic times (Rau 1873:398). More to the point, Rau argued,
many of the American implements were found in context with more "ad­
vanced" cultural materials, and it was not entirely clear whether their
primitive nature was due to their antiquity or to their being unfinished im­
plements (Rau 1873 :395). In the face of this, Rau chose to be circumspect in
the application of the analogy between European and American implements
and urged instead the further study and examination of caves and drift beds.
But what had become clear by the time Rau made his plea was that the ar­
chaeological and geological situation on this continent was different from
that of Europe. Here there were no deeply stratified alluvial valleys or caves
with human artifacts or remains mixed indiscriminately with Pleistocene­
aged fauna (Wilmsen 1965). As a consequence, the definition of an
American Paleolithic age became of necessity based on typological
analogues. American researchers inferred from the work of Evans (1872),
Lubbock (1865), and Lyell (1863) the idea that all morphologically "rude"
objects were by definition Paleolithic in age (Noelke 1974: 126)-based on
the assumption that the older the material, the more primitive its ap­
pearance. Identity between European and American implements would
determine the antiquity of the latter. It was a position some Europeans
challenged (Stevens 1870); but as Thomas Wilson (1832-1902), curator of
prehistoric anthropology at the United States National Museum and trained
as a lawyer (Mason 1902), would later argue, "comparison is as good a rule
of evidence in archaeology as in law" (Wilson 1890:679).
The catalyst for these comparative studies was Charles C. Abbott
(1843-1919), who was a physician by training but a naturalist and ar­
chaeologist by inclination (Dexter 1971). Abbott began his studies on his
ancestral farm near Trenton, New Jersey, in the late 1860s (Cross 1956; Hart
1976). At first he had held the notion that the artifacts being turned up on his
land were those of the precursors of modern Native American groups from
the region, but by 1876 he had become convinced they were instead the rem­
nants of a different, probably Paleolithic, race (Abbott 1876a, 1876b).
Within 2 years he announced that the previous race was glacial in age (Ab­
bott 1877, 1878), and moved under the patronage of F. W. Putnam (1839­
1915), professor and curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and
Ethnology at Harvard.
With Putnam's support, the geological studies at Trenton were put on
firmer ground, beginning with the visit of Harvard geologist Nathaniel
Shaler in 1876 (Shaler 1876). Shaler was the first of a long line of geologists

22 DAVID J. MELTZER
ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY 23
fluid. Holmes continued his cordial correspondence to Wright and even
drafted a letter to Wright disassociating himself from McGee, who he
claimed had written the review "with the approval of none and without the
knowledge of nearly all" (Holmes to Wright, undated but likely April 1893,
Holmes papers, SIA). However, he had also been writing to another corre­
spondent that McGee was stirring up "the animals" at a great rate (Homes to
Branner, February 20, 1892, Holmes papers, SIA).
Holmes' papers (Holmes 1893a-e), including his own review of Man and
the Glacial Period (Holmes 1893c), are studied examples of apparent objec­
tivity and open-mindedness (Hinsley 1981: 107). As Hinsley (1981) has
observed, Holmes approached the matter by confessing his indifference to
the outcome of the investigation and claiming to be a priori willing to accept
glacial man. But after examining each case, he consistently found the
testimony overloaded with inaccuracies that were the relics of the unscien­
tific methods and misleading hypotheses of the "old archaeology." Holmes
concluded that all Paleolithic finds had been "prematurely announced and
unduly paraded" (Holmes 1893d:163).
Holmes' 1893 papers mark a shift from his previous reliance on the quarry
thesis to a dependence on geology (Hart 1976:162). Arguments that the
alleged Paleolithic tools were historic Native American quarry refuse
worked well on the artifacts found on the surface because the context seemed
Figure 1.2. An excursion to the steatite quarry, Clifton, Virginia, circa 1894. From left
to bespeak a recent deposition. For artifacts found in the purported glacial to right: Anita McGee (seated), WJ McGee, Margaret Hetzel (the owner of the site),
gravels, Holmes and his colleagues (particularly McGee, Chamberlin, and David Day, Otis Mason (seated, with stick), William Holmes (with elbow propped on
Salisbury) argued that the objects had been on the surface in recent times but rocks), unidentified man, and Rollin Salisbury (with umbrella).(Photograph courtesy
that due to factors like slumping, the uprooting of trees, and rodent burrow­ of the National Museum of American Art [formerly National Collection of Fine
Arts], Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.)
ing, they had been incorporated in older strata at greater depths (see Holmes
1893a,d) (see Figure 2.1). In those instances where the geological context proach, which Abbott saw as "something that must by proved at all hazards;
seemed sound, Holmes changed his strategy and cast aspersions on the col­ or if not demonstrated, foisted upon the unthinking to secure the scientific
lector (Holmes 1893e). The attitude among the BAE and USGS scientists, prominence of a few archaeological mugwumps" (Abbott 1893:122).
and this held true through the first two decades of this century (Holmes 1919; Because the defenders of early man were not about to back down, it is incor­
Hrdli~ka 1907, 1918), was that if any possibility of intrusion existed, if there
rect to suggest that "by the end of the 19th century [the BAE-USGS] views
were any instances where more modern Native American material could had been accepted" (Mounier 1972:64, see also Judd 1967). Of those who
have been incorporated into more ancient deposits, then the evidence had to supported glacial man prior to the 1890s, only a few changed their opinions
be considered invalid. as a result of Holmes' arguments.
As expected, the proponents of early man were unconvinced by the The differences between the two sides of the early man issue were largely
arguments and assertions of the federal scientists (see Abbott 1892a,b, 1893; irreconcilable, and the proponents of each spent much of their time talking
Haynes 1893a-d; Wright 1892a,c, 1893). They suggested in turn that past one another (Spencer 1979; see also Fowke 1902; Moorehead 1910). The
scenarios of intrusion or redeposition of younger material into older strata battles of the 1890s were not decisive victories for the BAE camp. Rather,
were irrelevant in the absence of empirical evidence for that process. They ~hey introduced an element of caution to the previously unrestrained theoriz­
further argued that analogies of Native American artifacts with Paleolithic Illg of the proponents of early man. After the government outburst, it was no
tools were inappropriate since they misrepresented the actual nature of the longer possible to accept unchallenged apparent morphological analogues
American Paleolithic artifacts. Finally, they took issue with the BAE ap- between European and American implements as a basis for a common