Paul Sidney Martin
Encyclopedia
Paul Sidney Martin was an American anthropologist
and archaeologist
. A lifelong associate of the Field Museum of Natural History
in Chicago, Martin studied pre-Columbian cultures
of the Southwestern United States
. He excavated more than a hundred archaeological site
s, starting with the groundbreaking seven-season expedition to the Montezuma County, Colorado
in 1930–1938. His research passed through three distinct stages: field archaeology of the Anasazi Pueblo
cultures of Colorado
in the 1930s, studies of the Mogollon culture in 1939–1955 and the New Archaeology
studies in 1956–1972. Martin collected more than 585 thousand archaeological artifacts although his own methods of handling these relics were at times destructive and unacceptable even by the standards of his time.
Martin was elected President of the Society for American Archaeology
and awarded the 1968 Alfred Vincent Kidder Award of the American Anthropological Association
. He trained over fifty professional archaeologists and published more than 200 academic and popular papers. Martin's field expeditions redefined the role of museum anthropologists from the search for exhibits to research-driven field studies.
in Winnetka, Illinois
. He studied history and languages at the University of Chicago
from September 1918 to December 1923. Martin attained a modest B- average grade
and found his true calling, anthropology
, only in the end of his undergraduate studies. He began graduate studies at the Department of Sociology under Fay-Cooper Cole
and became Cole's first Ph.D. student (he defended his Ph.D. thesis on Kiva culture
in May 1929). In the summer of 1925 Martin departed for his first practical field excavations sponsored by the Milwaukee Public Museum
.
In the summer of 1926 Martin examined 450 sites of the Mount Builders and 1,200 related artifacts in private collections. His first article has set a standard for the rest of his life: Martin the scientist was later known for prompt publication of collected field data. In the next three winters he assisted Sylvanus Morley
in his Yucatán
expeditions; in summers he attended excavations in Colorado
. Martin seriously dedicated himself to Mesoamerican studies
, but in 1929 his long-term plans were cut short by an acute bout of tropical diseases. The medics ruled out further field work in the jungle, and Martin had to limit his scientific career to continental United States.
By this time he was already well known to Midwestern historians and archaeologists. In 1928 Martin had already began his ten-year research in Montezuma County, Colorado
but in the summer of 1929 the Department of the Interior
denied him permission to excavate Lowry Pueblo
. The DOI argued that Martin's employer, the State Historical Society of Colorado, was financially unable to complete the excavation. According to Nash, this setback motivated Martin to seek a stronger employer. Indeed, on August 22, 1929 Berthold Laufer
of the Field Museum of Natural History
offered Martin a job at the Museum's department of anthropology and Martin readily accepted the offer.
Nash wrote that the Museum "almost certainly" planned to use Martin in the upcoming modernization of the museum exhibits in its new building in Grant Park
. Martin "spent a remarkable amount of time" in rearranging the exhibition and public outreach campaigns that preceded and accompanied the Century of Progress
exhibition of 1933–1934 and wrote the 122-page guide to the Archaeology of North America collection. After Laufer's suicide in 1934 Martin became the acting curator of the department and temporarily assumed Laufer's role in presenting the Oriental collections to the public. Martin chaired the department if from 1935 to 1964 and remained with the Museum until 1972. According to Nash, "no other Field Museum curator, in anthropology or any other department, was as visible on the exhibition floor, in Field Museum News, or in the Chicago newspapers during" the pre-war period.
Martin was never married and had no children. Towards the end of his life, in 1972, Martin moved to Tucson, Arizona
and for a short time worked at the University of Arizona
. The University then employed another, and unrelated Paul S. Martin
. This other Paul S. Martin (who died in 2010 and had already established himself as an unorthodox thinker in the early 1970s) also studied prehistoric, pre-Columbian America. Paul Sidney Martin died in 1974 of heart failure and coronary artery disease.
s, eight towers and twelve waste heaps at Cutthroat Castle
. He developed a theory that the Pueblo ruins actually belong to two types: an earlier known type built on open mesa
s and a different, rim-rock type of settlement built on the ledges of canyons. In 1929 he continued digging at the Beartooth Pueblo and Little Dog Ruin, focusing his research on the complex relationship between different buildings and passageways. In the beginning of 1930 the Field Museum secured him a blanket excavation license from the Department of Interior. Alfred V. Kidder
and Jesse Nusbaum spoke in support of Martin and pledged their responsibility for monitoring Martin's work in the field.
Work in Lowry Pueblo
commenced in the summer of 1930. Martin practiced novel Chicago excavation methode and mining technologies learned from Cole and Morley, recorded everything on film, but did not take care to reinforce the exposed walls. They collapsed during the winter. The summer of 1931 brought many celebrated finds: "sixty or seventy pieces of pottery, many sherds, bone tools, minor objects, and about one hundred excellent negatives..." "unlike anything in the area". More finds in 1933 and 1934 led Martin to a conclusion that Lowry Pueblo has witnessed five distinct periods of human occupation, the earliest of which he dated 894 A. D. based on tree ring dating
. Martin's writing of the period reflects a duality forced upon a scientist by his employer: Martin the Museum employee emphasized tangible loot and the process of finding it, Martin the scientist discussed ancient psychology and cultural patterns, and wondered about the root causes of Native American social evolution. In the end of his life Martin himself wrote that "Mostly, we dug out of curiosity, for fun, for specimens, and to write the
historical details for these sites and for this time period ... I fear some of [the excavations] were the result of my callow youth: the desire to make a name for myself by aping
Kidder ... [and] to obtain a goodly amount of loot for the Museum, for I was, at the time, very museum minded."
The Lowry campaign was concluded in 1937–1938 with the studies of the settling patterns (Martin himself did not use the term). The 1938 season seemed uninspiring until August when excavations at Basketmareks' Site brought a breakthrough. The new finds pushed the timescale of Pueblo settlements from 1000 A. D. to 400 A. D. Martin's student Carl Lloyd developed a new methode of surveying which enabled quick surveys of large stretches of land. Lloyd reported locating eighty sites over an area of 16.5 square miles (42.7 km²) in one short season. Another of Martin's students, John Beach Rinaldo, joined the team in 1939 and remained Martin's assistant for a quarter of a century. Martin himself sought a more promising field where he could leave a lasting "scholarly mark on the profession". He decided to move from pure field archaeology into "greener intellectual pastures" and concentrated on the Mogollon culture of Arizona and New Mexico, which was discovered by Emil Haury
in 1936.
published Anasazi Painted Pottery in the Field Museum of Natural History, a comprehensive catalogue of over 5,000 ancient Pueblo pottery artifacts. Martin's own contribution to archaeology made before World War II
has been overshadowed by his post-war research in Arizona. He was not actively engaged in academic teaching, and thus did not train a stream of graduate students like his contemporary Kidder. Most of his own pre-war works were published by the Museum's own press, not peer-reviewed journals
.
According to Nash, these papers must now be considered incomplete, failing modern research standards. Martin did not screen the excavated earth for all present things, thus destroying potentially significant evidence (the practice of screening became a standard only in the 1970s). Martin preserved and shipped to Chicago the artifacts that he himself deemed exhibition-worthy; other, less significant, finds were recorded and then abandoned in the field. During the 1936 Lowry Pueblo excavation he described 1,377 objects but catalogued only 598 of them. The balance was lost. A 1998 inventory of the aforementioned collection found only 520 exhibits in place. The other 78 were lost through attrition, theft and deliberate culling by the Museum staff. According to Nash, the 1937 and 1938 collections fared even worse. Finally, Martin did not keep or deliberately destroyed the original excavation records - his own and other archaeologists' (Carl Lloyd's). This, according to Nash, was unacceptable even in the 1930s.
in Catron County, New Mexico
. His stated goals were to search for Abajo pottery, study the newly discovered Mogollon culture and the relationship between it and the Anasazi cultures. The first season was dedicated to discovering specific traits that could help draw the line between the Mogollons and other prehistoric people. Nash recovered twelve thousand sherds from only eight excavated pit houses. The origin of these sherds "was deemed critical to determining the location of the earliest pottery in the Southwest." The 1941 season was similar, with an even larger number of sherds found.
World War II
interrupted Martin's field research for four years. The hiatus changed the pattern of Martin's life and ultimately his scientific interests. Increased interaction with his peers in Chicago area resulted in a turn to historical analysis of prehistoric society: "how the former inhabitants of the village lived, how they grouped themselves socially, how they solved their subsistence problems, whether they had any religious concepts, and what their particular interests were." According to Martin himself, the change was directly influenced by the work of Fred Eggan
and George Murdock
. The new approach became the seed of what would become the New Archaeology
.
In 1947 Martin excavated the Pine Lawn site in New Mexico. Martin wanted to find the oldest prehistoric settlement in the Southwest. Radiocarbon dating
was not introduced yet, and he could only rely on tree ring dating. This approach required a site with a long continuous stock of suitable tree matter, and such a site, Tularosa Cave
, was found in 1950 one mile (1.6 km) from Aragon, New Mexico
. Earlier known Mogollon sites were open to the elements; Tularosa Cave was buried under a thick layer of soil which preserved the organic remains of the Mogollon culture - maize
cobs, shoes, baskets, netting and strings etc. These organic specimens preserved by Martin and Rinaldo enabled later researchers to perform DNA analysis and neutron activation analysis
of the site excavated many decades ago.
In 1952 Martin and Rinaldo proposed a new, three-phase classification of pre-Columbian material culture, starting with the earliest one known to them - the Pine Lawn Phase that started around 150 B. C. Martin reasoned that the changes from one phase to another were caused by the diffusion of people and the increase in their dependence on wild, rather than cultivated, plants that coincided with a decrease in hunting. Studies of food habits brought Martin in tighter contact with biologists; his associate Hugh Cutter coined the term cultural ecology
in 1956. By 1956 Martin seemed to understand everything about the Mogollons except one thing - why did this culture disappeared in the 14th century?
In 1960 Martin obtained a National Science Foundation
research grant that had, in retrospect, significantly changed the scope of archaeology Field Museum. According to the terms of the grant, the museum became the first institution to practice pollen analysis in archaeology. Martin admitted that he did not really know what to make of it; actual research was carried out by James Schoenwetter who concluded that around 1000 A. D. the American Southwest witnessed a radical climate change.
Looking back into the past, Martin critically reassessed his own input; by 1962 dissatisfaction developed into a deep personal crisis. Martin wrote that "I have dumped all my research prior to 1962" and that his lengthy field reports produced over thirty years were just "boring repetitions of minute detail". He continued work at the university and still managed field expeditions, but practically quit writing. Only one of Martin's last ten excavations was adequately published; the paper was released posthumously by his students.
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
and archaeologist
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
. A lifelong associate of the Field Museum of Natural History
Field Museum of Natural History
The Field Museum of Natural History is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It sits on Lake Shore Drive next to Lake Michigan, part of a scenic complex known as the Museum Campus Chicago...
in Chicago, Martin studied pre-Columbian cultures
Pre-Columbian era
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...
of the Southwestern United States
Southwestern United States
The Southwestern United States is a region defined in different ways by different sources. Broad definitions include nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah...
. He excavated more than a hundred archaeological site
Archaeological site
An archaeological site is a place in which evidence of past activity is preserved , and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology and represents a part of the archaeological record.Beyond this, the definition and geographical extent of a 'site' can vary widely,...
s, starting with the groundbreaking seven-season expedition to the Montezuma County, Colorado
Montezuma County, Colorado
Montezuma County is the southwesternmost of the 64 counties of the state of Colorado of the United States. The county population was 23,830 at U.S. Census 2000...
in 1930–1938. His research passed through three distinct stages: field archaeology of the Anasazi Pueblo
Ancient Pueblo Peoples
Ancient Pueblo People or Ancestral Pueblo peoples were an ancient Native American culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the United States, comprising southern Utah, northern Arizona, northwest New Mexico, and southern Colorado...
cultures of Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
in the 1930s, studies of the Mogollon culture in 1939–1955 and the New Archaeology
Processual archaeology
Processual archaeology is a form of archaeological theory that had its genesis in 1958 with Willey and Phillips' work Method and Theory in American Archeology, in which the pair stated that "American archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing" , a rephrasing of Frederic William Maitland's...
studies in 1956–1972. Martin collected more than 585 thousand archaeological artifacts although his own methods of handling these relics were at times destructive and unacceptable even by the standards of his time.
Martin was elected President of the Society for American Archaeology
Society for American Archaeology
The Society for American Archaeology is the largest organization of professional archaeologists of the Americas in the world. The Society was founded in 1934 and today has over 7000 members. The Society holds an annual conference and publishes the flagship journal of American archaeology,...
and awarded the 1968 Alfred Vincent Kidder Award of the American Anthropological Association
American Anthropological Association
The American Anthropological Association is a professional organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 11,000 members, the Arlington, Virginia based association includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, biological anthropologists, linguistic...
. He trained over fifty professional archaeologists and published more than 200 academic and popular papers. Martin's field expeditions redefined the role of museum anthropologists from the search for exhibits to research-driven field studies.
Biography
Martin was the fifth child of Ellsworth C. Martin and Adelaide May Martin (née Sackett). The most recent biographical article by Stephen Nash states his date of birth as November 22, 1898; the site of the Field Museum of Natural History as November 20, 1899. He attended the New Trier High SchoolNew Trier High School
New Trier High School is a public four-year high school , with its major campus located in Winnetka, Illinois, USA, and a second campus in Northfield, Illinois, with freshman classes and district administration...
in Winnetka, Illinois
Winnetka, Illinois
Winnetka is an affluent North Shore village located approximately north of downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois. Winnetka was featured on the list of America's 25 top-earning towns and "one of the best places to live" by CNN Money in 2011...
. He studied history and languages at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
from September 1918 to December 1923. Martin attained a modest B- average grade
Grade (education)
Grades are standardized measurements of varying levels of comprehension within a subject area. Grades can be assigned in letters , as a range , as a number out of a possible total , as descriptors , in percentages, or, as is common in some post-secondary...
and found his true calling, anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, only in the end of his undergraduate studies. He began graduate studies at the Department of Sociology under Fay-Cooper Cole
Fay-Cooper Cole
.Fay-Cooper Cole was a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago and most famously was a witness for the defense for John Scopes at the Scopes Trial.-External links:...
and became Cole's first Ph.D. student (he defended his Ph.D. thesis on Kiva culture
Kiva
A kiva is a room used by modern Puebloans for religious rituals, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, kivas are square-walled and underground, and are used for spiritual ceremonies....
in May 1929). In the summer of 1925 Martin departed for his first practical field excavations sponsored by the Milwaukee Public Museum
Milwaukee Public Museum
The Milwaukee Public Museum is a natural and human history museum located in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. The museum was chartered in 1882 and opened to the public in 1884; it is a not-for-profit organization operated by the Milwaukee Public Museum, Inc. MPM has three floors of exhibits...
.
In the summer of 1926 Martin examined 450 sites of the Mount Builders and 1,200 related artifacts in private collections. His first article has set a standard for the rest of his life: Martin the scientist was later known for prompt publication of collected field data. In the next three winters he assisted Sylvanus Morley
Sylvanus Morley
Sylvanus Griswold Morley was an American archaeologist, epigrapher, and Mayanist scholar who made significant contributions toward the study of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in the early twentieth century....
in his Yucatán
Yucatán Peninsula
The Yucatán Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico, separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico, with the northern coastline on the Yucatán Channel...
expeditions; in summers he attended excavations in Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
. Martin seriously dedicated himself to Mesoamerican studies
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...
, but in 1929 his long-term plans were cut short by an acute bout of tropical diseases. The medics ruled out further field work in the jungle, and Martin had to limit his scientific career to continental United States.
By this time he was already well known to Midwestern historians and archaeologists. In 1928 Martin had already began his ten-year research in Montezuma County, Colorado
Montezuma County, Colorado
Montezuma County is the southwesternmost of the 64 counties of the state of Colorado of the United States. The county population was 23,830 at U.S. Census 2000...
but in the summer of 1929 the Department of the Interior
United States Department of the Interior
The United States Department of the Interior is the United States federal executive department of the U.S. government responsible for the management and conservation of most federal land and natural resources, and the administration of programs relating to Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native...
denied him permission to excavate Lowry Pueblo
Lowry Pueblo
The Lowry Pueblo is an Ancestral Puebloan archaeological site located in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument near Pleasant View, Colorado, United States. The pueblo was constructed about 1060 AD atop abandoned pithouses from an earlier period of occupation. It was occupied by 100 people...
. The DOI argued that Martin's employer, the State Historical Society of Colorado, was financially unable to complete the excavation. According to Nash, this setback motivated Martin to seek a stronger employer. Indeed, on August 22, 1929 Berthold Laufer
Berthold Laufer
Berthold Laufer was a German-American anthropologist and orientalist.Laufer was born in Cologne to a Jewish family. He attended the Friedrich Wilhelms Gymnasium from 1884-1893. He continued his studies in Berlin and completed his doctorate degree at the University of Leipzig in 1897...
of the Field Museum of Natural History
Field Museum of Natural History
The Field Museum of Natural History is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It sits on Lake Shore Drive next to Lake Michigan, part of a scenic complex known as the Museum Campus Chicago...
offered Martin a job at the Museum's department of anthropology and Martin readily accepted the offer.
Nash wrote that the Museum "almost certainly" planned to use Martin in the upcoming modernization of the museum exhibits in its new building in Grant Park
Grant Park (Chicago)
Grant Park, with between the downtown Chicago Loop and Lake Michigan, offers many different attractions in its large open space. The park is generally flat. It is also crossed by large boulevards and even a bed of sunken railroad tracks...
. Martin "spent a remarkable amount of time" in rearranging the exhibition and public outreach campaigns that preceded and accompanied the Century of Progress
Century of Progress
A Century of Progress International Exposition was the name of a World's Fair held in Chicago from 1933 to 1934 to celebrate the city's centennial. The theme of the fair was technological innovation...
exhibition of 1933–1934 and wrote the 122-page guide to the Archaeology of North America collection. After Laufer's suicide in 1934 Martin became the acting curator of the department and temporarily assumed Laufer's role in presenting the Oriental collections to the public. Martin chaired the department if from 1935 to 1964 and remained with the Museum until 1972. According to Nash, "no other Field Museum curator, in anthropology or any other department, was as visible on the exhibition floor, in Field Museum News, or in the Chicago newspapers during" the pre-war period.
Martin was never married and had no children. Towards the end of his life, in 1972, Martin moved to Tucson, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
and for a short time worked at the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
. The University then employed another, and unrelated Paul S. Martin
Paul S. Martin
Paul S. Martin was a geoscientist at the University of Arizona who developed the theory that the Pleistocene extinction of large mammals worldwide was caused by overhunting by humans...
. This other Paul S. Martin (who died in 2010 and had already established himself as an unorthodox thinker in the early 1970s) also studied prehistoric, pre-Columbian America. Paul Sidney Martin died in 1974 of heart failure and coronary artery disease.
Anasazi excavations
Martin's Montezuma County project, which spanned from 1928 to 1938, is "enormous by modern standards". In the first season his team of six diggers excavated thirty rooms, four kivaKiva
A kiva is a room used by modern Puebloans for religious rituals, many of them associated with the kachina belief system. Among the modern Hopi and most other Pueblo peoples, kivas are square-walled and underground, and are used for spiritual ceremonies....
s, eight towers and twelve waste heaps at Cutthroat Castle
Hovenweep National Monument
Hovenweep National Monument is located on land in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, located between Cortez, Colorado and Blanding, Utah on the Cajon Mesa of the Great Sage Plain...
. He developed a theory that the Pueblo ruins actually belong to two types: an earlier known type built on open mesa
Mesa
A mesa or table mountain is an elevated area of land with a flat top and sides that are usually steep cliffs. It takes its name from its characteristic table-top shape....
s and a different, rim-rock type of settlement built on the ledges of canyons. In 1929 he continued digging at the Beartooth Pueblo and Little Dog Ruin, focusing his research on the complex relationship between different buildings and passageways. In the beginning of 1930 the Field Museum secured him a blanket excavation license from the Department of Interior. Alfred V. Kidder
Alfred V. Kidder
Alfred Vincent Kidder was an American archaeologist considered the foremost of the southwestern United States and Mesoamerica during the first half of the 20th century...
and Jesse Nusbaum spoke in support of Martin and pledged their responsibility for monitoring Martin's work in the field.
Work in Lowry Pueblo
Lowry Pueblo
The Lowry Pueblo is an Ancestral Puebloan archaeological site located in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument near Pleasant View, Colorado, United States. The pueblo was constructed about 1060 AD atop abandoned pithouses from an earlier period of occupation. It was occupied by 100 people...
commenced in the summer of 1930. Martin practiced novel Chicago excavation methode and mining technologies learned from Cole and Morley, recorded everything on film, but did not take care to reinforce the exposed walls. They collapsed during the winter. The summer of 1931 brought many celebrated finds: "sixty or seventy pieces of pottery, many sherds, bone tools, minor objects, and about one hundred excellent negatives..." "unlike anything in the area". More finds in 1933 and 1934 led Martin to a conclusion that Lowry Pueblo has witnessed five distinct periods of human occupation, the earliest of which he dated 894 A. D. based on tree ring dating
Dendrochronology
Dendrochronology or tree-ring dating is the scientific method of dating based on the analysis of patterns of tree-rings. Dendrochronology can date the time at which tree rings were formed, in many types of wood, to the exact calendar year...
. Martin's writing of the period reflects a duality forced upon a scientist by his employer: Martin the Museum employee emphasized tangible loot and the process of finding it, Martin the scientist discussed ancient psychology and cultural patterns, and wondered about the root causes of Native American social evolution. In the end of his life Martin himself wrote that "Mostly, we dug out of curiosity, for fun, for specimens, and to write the
historical details for these sites and for this time period ... I fear some of [the excavations] were the result of my callow youth: the desire to make a name for myself by aping
Kidder ... [and] to obtain a goodly amount of loot for the Museum, for I was, at the time, very museum minded."
The Lowry campaign was concluded in 1937–1938 with the studies of the settling patterns (Martin himself did not use the term). The 1938 season seemed uninspiring until August when excavations at Basketmareks' Site brought a breakthrough. The new finds pushed the timescale of Pueblo settlements from 1000 A. D. to 400 A. D. Martin's student Carl Lloyd developed a new methode of surveying which enabled quick surveys of large stretches of land. Lloyd reported locating eighty sites over an area of 16.5 square miles (42.7 km²) in one short season. Another of Martin's students, John Beach Rinaldo, joined the team in 1939 and remained Martin's assistant for a quarter of a century. Martin himself sought a more promising field where he could leave a lasting "scholarly mark on the profession". He decided to move from pure field archaeology into "greener intellectual pastures" and concentrated on the Mogollon culture of Arizona and New Mexico, which was discovered by Emil Haury
Emil Haury
Emil Walter "Doc" Haury was an influential archaeologist who specialized in the archaeology of the American Southwest....
in 1936.
Early publications
In 1940 Martin and Elizabeth WillisElizabeth Willis
Elizabeth Willis is an American poet, literary critic and professor of literature and creative writing at Wesleyan University. Her most notable work includes four major books of poetry and a scholarly collection of essays on Lorine Niedecker which she edited...
published Anasazi Painted Pottery in the Field Museum of Natural History, a comprehensive catalogue of over 5,000 ancient Pueblo pottery artifacts. Martin's own contribution to archaeology made before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
has been overshadowed by his post-war research in Arizona. He was not actively engaged in academic teaching, and thus did not train a stream of graduate students like his contemporary Kidder. Most of his own pre-war works were published by the Museum's own press, not peer-reviewed journals
Academic journal
An academic journal is a peer-reviewed periodical in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as forums for the introduction and presentation for scrutiny of new research, and the critique of existing research...
.
According to Nash, these papers must now be considered incomplete, failing modern research standards. Martin did not screen the excavated earth for all present things, thus destroying potentially significant evidence (the practice of screening became a standard only in the 1970s). Martin preserved and shipped to Chicago the artifacts that he himself deemed exhibition-worthy; other, less significant, finds were recorded and then abandoned in the field. During the 1936 Lowry Pueblo excavation he described 1,377 objects but catalogued only 598 of them. The balance was lost. A 1998 inventory of the aforementioned collection found only 520 exhibits in place. The other 78 were lost through attrition, theft and deliberate culling by the Museum staff. According to Nash, the 1937 and 1938 collections fared even worse. Finally, Martin did not keep or deliberately destroyed the original excavation records - his own and other archaeologists' (Carl Lloyd's). This, according to Nash, was unacceptable even in the 1930s.
Mogollon studies
In 1939 Martin began excavations at the Stevens-Underwood (SU) site, seven miles (11 km) from ReserveReserve, New Mexico
Reserve is a village in Catron County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 387 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Catron County. Currently the village has several stores, a bar, and a health clinic...
in Catron County, New Mexico
Catron County, New Mexico
-2010:Whereas according to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau:*89.8% White*0.4% Black*2.7% Native American*0.2% Asian*0.0% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander*3.1% Two or more races*3.7% Other races*19.0% Hispanic or Latino -2000:...
. His stated goals were to search for Abajo pottery, study the newly discovered Mogollon culture and the relationship between it and the Anasazi cultures. The first season was dedicated to discovering specific traits that could help draw the line between the Mogollons and other prehistoric people. Nash recovered twelve thousand sherds from only eight excavated pit houses. The origin of these sherds "was deemed critical to determining the location of the earliest pottery in the Southwest." The 1941 season was similar, with an even larger number of sherds found.
World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
interrupted Martin's field research for four years. The hiatus changed the pattern of Martin's life and ultimately his scientific interests. Increased interaction with his peers in Chicago area resulted in a turn to historical analysis of prehistoric society: "how the former inhabitants of the village lived, how they grouped themselves socially, how they solved their subsistence problems, whether they had any religious concepts, and what their particular interests were." According to Martin himself, the change was directly influenced by the work of Fred Eggan
Fred Eggan
Frederick Russell Eggan was an American anthropologist best known for his innovative application of the principles of British social anthropology to the study of Native American tribes. He was the favorite student of the British social anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown during Radcliffe-Brown's...
and George Murdock
George Murdock
George Peter Murdock was a notable American anthropologist. He is remembered for his empirical approach to ethnological studies and his landmark works on Old World populations.-Early life:...
. The new approach became the seed of what would become the New Archaeology
Processual archaeology
Processual archaeology is a form of archaeological theory that had its genesis in 1958 with Willey and Phillips' work Method and Theory in American Archeology, in which the pair stated that "American archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing" , a rephrasing of Frederic William Maitland's...
.
In 1947 Martin excavated the Pine Lawn site in New Mexico. Martin wanted to find the oldest prehistoric settlement in the Southwest. Radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...
was not introduced yet, and he could only rely on tree ring dating. This approach required a site with a long continuous stock of suitable tree matter, and such a site, Tularosa Cave
Tularosa Basin
The Tularosa Basin is a graben basin in the Basin and Range Province and within the Chihuahuan Desert, east of the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico, in the Southwestern United States.-Geography:...
, was found in 1950 one mile (1.6 km) from Aragon, New Mexico
Aragon, New Mexico
Aragon is an unincorporated community on the Tularosa River in Catron County, New Mexico, United States. It is located at an altitude of seven miles northeast of Apache Creek.The latitude is 33.88 N, longitude 108.54 W.-Fort Tularosa:...
. Earlier known Mogollon sites were open to the elements; Tularosa Cave was buried under a thick layer of soil which preserved the organic remains of the Mogollon culture - maize
Maize
Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...
cobs, shoes, baskets, netting and strings etc. These organic specimens preserved by Martin and Rinaldo enabled later researchers to perform DNA analysis and neutron activation analysis
Neutron activation analysis
In chemistry, neutron activation analysis is a nuclear process used for determining the concentrations of elements in a vast amount of materials. NAA allows discrete sampling of elements as it disregards the chemical form of a sample, and focuses solely on its nucleus. The method is based on...
of the site excavated many decades ago.
In 1952 Martin and Rinaldo proposed a new, three-phase classification of pre-Columbian material culture, starting with the earliest one known to them - the Pine Lawn Phase that started around 150 B. C. Martin reasoned that the changes from one phase to another were caused by the diffusion of people and the increase in their dependence on wild, rather than cultivated, plants that coincided with a decrease in hunting. Studies of food habits brought Martin in tighter contact with biologists; his associate Hugh Cutter coined the term cultural ecology
Cultural ecology
Cultural ecology studies the relationship between a given society and its natural environment as well as the life-forms and ecosystems that support its lifeways . This may be carried out diachronically , or synchronically...
in 1956. By 1956 Martin seemed to understand everything about the Mogollons except one thing - why did this culture disappeared in the 14th century?
New Archaeology
In 1955 Martin became lecturer in anthropology at the University of Chicago and for the first time in his life began intensive work with students. He gradually stepped aside from field archaeology; his former authoritative management style became democratic and forgiving, and he even allowed women to archaeologists' camps. In 1957 and 1958 he managed excavation in Little Ortega, Laguna Salada and Table Rock Pueblo, but reports on this research were written primarily by Rinaldo.In 1960 Martin obtained a National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
research grant that had, in retrospect, significantly changed the scope of archaeology Field Museum. According to the terms of the grant, the museum became the first institution to practice pollen analysis in archaeology. Martin admitted that he did not really know what to make of it; actual research was carried out by James Schoenwetter who concluded that around 1000 A. D. the American Southwest witnessed a radical climate change.
Looking back into the past, Martin critically reassessed his own input; by 1962 dissatisfaction developed into a deep personal crisis. Martin wrote that "I have dumped all my research prior to 1962" and that his lengthy field reports produced over thirty years were just "boring repetitions of minute detail". He continued work at the university and still managed field expeditions, but practically quit writing. Only one of Martin's last ten excavations was adequately published; the paper was released posthumously by his students.
External links
- The Paul S. Martin collection at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago