¹The significance of Jefferson’s excavations has been noted previously (Lehmann-Hartleben, 1943; Silverberg, 1968; Willey and Sabloff, 1980; Wheeler, 1954). In each case, Jefferson’s careful, modern, scientific approach was lauded. Willey and Sabloff (1980:32) marveled that “he excavated at all” and underscored his problem orientation. Lehmann-Hartleben (1943:163) further emphasized that “most amazing of all” was his ability to realize the significance of excavating to “the virgin soil” and the recognition of superimposed strata, “which reveal the inner structure of the mound.” To this list should be added the integration of human biological and archaeological information in his careful, problem-oriented approach.

²Cushing’s preferred annotation.

³Harrison Allen’s 1898 study of Hawaiian skulls from caves and coastal sites appears to be among the first to explicitly compare physical features of different status groups that may be contemporary.

⁴Os inca, or “Inca bones,” are separate bones appearing in the posterior aspect of the skull due to nonpathological failure in suture closure. High frequencies of Inca bones have been reported in Andean skeletal series.

⁵These are ossification failures adjacent to the articular surfaces of the distal humeri.

⁶The Morton collection has been transferred to the University of Pennsylvania (1966), where it is curated today.

⁷In fact, incomplete sensitivity to historical and ethnological contexts, as well as selective sampling, were critiques leveled against the Morton collection by Daniel Wilson (1876) during the 19th century.

⁸Under Hrdlička’s influence, most human remains were returned to the SI from the AMM during 1898, with only a few crania retained along with items of pathological significance (Sledzik and Barbian. 2001:228). Lamb (1915:631) reported that the transfer involved 2206 Indian crania, followed by a few additional skulls from the archaeologist C. B. Moore. He goes on to state that “in May, 1899, 115 boxes of bones from the Hemenway Expedition that had remained at the Army Medical Museum, were transferred to the National Museum, and in January, 1904, nearly 600 skulls, pelves, and two Indian brains were likewise transferred” (Lamb, 1915:631). Following this transfer, the materials were lodged within the Division of Physical Anthropology, rather than in the Division of Mammals, where they had been accessioned prior to 1869. During these early years, only those human bones showing cultural modifications such that they could be classified as artifacts, e.g., bone flutes, were accessioned and stored with the archaeological collections (D. Hunt, personal communication, 2004) in what was called “its ethnological department” (reference for quotes: Smithsonian Institution, NMNH Web site Department of Anthropology: A History of the Department, 1897–1997).

⁹The other was Dr. Herman F. C. ten Kate (Baxter, 1889). Dr. ten Kate [Ph.D., M.D. from the University of Leyden, The Netherlands (Hrdlička, 1919)] was the physical anthropologist hired by Cushing for the expedition. As it turned out, he arrived at camp on November 18, 1887, only 1 week before Wortman. Brunson (1989) reported that after initial tensions, the two men actively engaged in field work designed to maximize recovery of the fragile skeletal remains. Dr. ten Kate published reports on the hyoid bone (with Wortman et al., 1888) and also investigated the somatology of living Southwestern Indians in relationship to the ancient remains from Los Muertos. He concluded that the ancient remains from the Salado valley and sites near Zuñi most closely resembled the living Zuñis (ten Kate, 1892).

¹⁰Las Acequias is spelled “las acquias” in the George Peabody accession list (Peabody BIOCAT database), but as it is reported for the Salt River Valley, it appears that the two are identical.

¹¹The 1945 publication was a revision of Haury’s 1934 dissertation. Haury reported examining 134 lots of bones, while there are only 130 accessions within #46-73 (Peabody Museum, 2001). There were three examples of double cremations (Haury, 1945:45), which could render the lot numbers and the accession records nearly identical (131/130).

¹²Brunson (1989:146) reported that distinctly different numbering systems were used for grave lots with inhumations and with cremations. Accompaniments with inhumations were numbered sequentially, whereas all items, including human cremains, associated with cremation urns were assigned a single number, followed by sequential alphabetic designations, e.g., la, lb, lc. This would have facilitated attempts to reassociate skeletal remains with their interment contexts.

¹³The collection of the Anatomical Museum of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement was accompanied by a detailed catalogue of the cabinet, which was summarized by Jackson (1847). The collection was developed from specimens presented to the society at bimonthly meetings. Materials useful for teaching, those with authentic case histories, and unusual examples were preferred. Thus, the collection included a “very beautiful French preparation” of a disarticulated skull (p. 2, #14), alongside an albatross humerus (p. 3, #25) and a diseased mink skull (p. 11, #79).

¹⁴Other 19th-century scientists who questioned race-based craniology included Allen (1895a, 1898) and Wilson (1876; see also Trigger, 1966).

¹⁵Both Hoyme (1957) and Stewart (1979) cited the Matthews, Wortman, and Billings (1893) report as Matthews and Billings (1891).

¹⁶“An indication of the possible age of these remains may be found in a consideration of the remarkable archaeological discoveries reported from the Spanish province of Almeria, made last summer, so shortly after these of Los Muertos as to be almost simultaneous. The account of those reads like a repetition of the story of these, for there, too, it was a stone-age culture whose remains have been brought to light; that people also practiced both cremation and house-burial, and there, as here, the house-burials often included both husband and wife, or at least man and woman, side by side. As the conditions of soil and climate in southern Spain and our Southwest are remarkably alike, both regions being dry, hot and desert-like, and conducive to the long preservation of burial remains, it is quite possible for relics of the past to last as long here as there. And for European archaeology there is set an interesting task in estimating the possible period of a stone-age civilization on the borders of the Mediterranean, in a land subject to the influences of the iron-age Latin cultures and the bronze-age pre-Latin people. It is a striking fact, that at nearly the same time there should be discovered the remains of two cultures so closely resembling each other in their institutions, both in new Spain and in old.” [Baxter (1888), cited in Hinsley and Wilcox (1996:133)]

¹⁷The same may not have pertained to the Canadian Daniel Wilson. Trigger (1966) believed that one reason Wilson, born in Scotland, did not pursue his anthropological interests more vigorously was his Toronto location, remote physically from like-minded scholars in Europe and isolated intellectually from the racist climate of the United States. Wilson’s contributions are considered by Cook in Chapter 2.

¹⁸Hrdlička also emphasized stratigraphy and other contextual features in evaluating evidence for early man in South America (1912a:385). “The main defects of the testimony thought to establish the presence of various representatives of early man and his precursors in South America are (1) imperfect geologic determinations, especially with regard to the immediate conditions under which the finds were made; (2) imperfect consideration of the circumstances relating to the human remains, particularly as to possibilities of their artificial or accidental introduction into the older terrains, and as to the value of their association from the standpoint of zoopaleontology; (3) the attributing of undue weight to the organic and inorganic alternations exhibited by the human bones; and (4) morphological consideration of the human bones by those who were not expert anthropologists, who at times were misled in the important matter of placing and orienting the specimens and who accepted mere individual variations or features due to artificial deformation as normal and specifically distinctive characters.”

¹⁹William Laughlin, following his first year at Willamette University (1938), spent 3 months excavating with Hrdlička in Alaska and Siberia (Commander Islands). Based on that experience, Laughlin (interview reported in Krupnik, 2003:211) expressed reservations about Hrdlička’s archaeological procedures: “Hrdlička was not good at excavating. He did not keep any records, and he just dug to get any skeletons he needed. I remember he always kept two separate boxes on this trip (of 1938): for ‘good’ artifacts and for ‘other’ (bad) ones. At the seminars, he used to show the skeleton of a 17-year-old girl and every time he added: It’s only a girl. He always degraded women, even in the skeletons. At Amchitka, we left everything we excavated at the beach. As the tide came in, it washed the objects over every morning and we picked them up again — whatever was left behind. But of course we missed lots of things or recovered them much later. That was his style .…” Other comments critical of Hrdlička’s excavation methods can be found in de Laguna (1956), Bray and Killion (1994), and Scott (1992), who termed Hrdlička an “incautious” archaeologist. In his review of Hrdlička’s early 1930s excavations at the Uyak site (Larsen Bay, Kodiak Island, AK), Speaker (1994:56) reported: “Hrdlička, although known as a meticulous physical anthropologist, approached the archaeological excavations of the Uyak site with the primary intent of recovering as many skeletal remains as possible (Hrdlička, 1941:1; 1944a:3, 141). He made no systematic attempt to record archaeological information at the site, and his field records are limited to anecdotal notes, sketch maps, and rudimentary profile drawings. Hrdlička divided the midden deposits into three strata. He referred to these as the black, red, and blue levels. Artifacts and skeletons were marked with colored pencils to indicate the stratum from which the item had been removed. Only rarely was any more precise provenience information recorded.”