Luther Sheeleigh Cressman (October 24 1897 – April 4 1994) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
anthropologist. He is known as the father of Oregon anthropology.
Cressman was born outside of
Pottstown, PennsylvaniaPottstown is a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia, on the Schuylkill River. Pottstown was laid out in 1752–53 and named Pottsgrove in honor of its founder, John Potts. The old name was abandoned at the time of the incorporation as a...
, the son of a physician. He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1923, but feeling doubts about his vocation, began studying sociology and anthropology at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
in New York. He received his Ph.D.
Luther Sheeleigh Cressman (October 24 1897 – April 4 1994) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
anthropologist. He is known as the father of Oregon anthropology.
Cressman was born outside of
Pottstown, PennsylvaniaPottstown is a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia, on the Schuylkill River. Pottstown was laid out in 1752–53 and named Pottsgrove in honor of its founder, John Potts. The old name was abandoned at the time of the incorporation as a...
, the son of a physician. He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1923, but feeling doubts about his vocation, began studying sociology and anthropology at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
in New York. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1928, and that same year, he left the priesthood.
In 1929, he took a position as Professor of Sociology at the
University of OregonThe University of Oregon is a public, coeducational research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. The second oldest public university in the state, UO was founded in 1876, and graduated its first class two years later. The University of Oregon is one of 60 members of the Association of...
. The Department of Anthropology was founded by him six years later. His first hire for the department was
Homer BarnettHomer Garner Barnett was an American anthropologist, thinker, fieldworker, and teacher.- Education :He began his studies at Stanford in civil engineering but soon quit to rethink his major. When he returned to Stanford it was as a liberal arts major with an emphasis on philosophy. He graduated...
. Cressman was the chair of the department from 1935 until his retirement in 1963.
His most significant discovery came in 1938, when he discovered a pair of perfectly preserved shredded
sagebrushArtemisia tridentata is a shrub or small tree from the family Asteraceae. Some botanists treat it in the segregate genus Seriphidium, as S. tridentatum W. A. Weber, but this is not widely followed...
bark sandals at Fort Rock in
OregonOregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
that were
radiocarbon datedRadiocarbon dating, or carbon dating, is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 60,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present"...
from 10,500 to 9,300 years old, making them the oldest footwear found in
North AmericaNorth America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and in the western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific...
.
His autobiography
A Golden Journey: Memoirs of an Archaologist was awarded the 1989
Oregon Book AwardThe Oregon Book Awards are presented annually by Literary Arts, Inc. for "the finest accomplishments by Oregon writers who work in genres of poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, drama and young readers literature." -History:...
for literary nonfiction.
Cressman's first wife was anthropologist
Margaret MeadMargaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s....
, to whom he was married from 1923-1927. After their divorce, he married Dorothy Cecelia Loch, a Scotswoman, in 1928. Loch, whom he always called "Cecelia", was an invaluable help in his career. They were married for 49 years, until her death in 1977, and had one daughter.
Publications
- The Sandal and the Cave
- A Golden Journey: Memoirs of an Anthropologist
- Klamath Prehistory
- Prehistory of the Far West: Homes of Vanished Peoples
Awards
- Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
- John Alsop King Fellowship
- Charles E. Johnson Memorial Award
External links