New Virtual Finding Aids for Two 20th Century Biological Anthropology Collections

Over the course of the last 8 months, I have been working on a Legacy Finding Aids project at the National Anthropological Archives (NAA). The primary purpose of this project was to take finding aids which were not available online, update them to current standards, and make them available through the Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives (SOVA). Five of these have already been profiled on this blog (Sydel Silverman, William Duncan Strong, Aleš Hrdlička, Ethel Cutler Freeman, and Virginia Drew Watson). I will be profiling the rest in groups over the next few months. All funding for this project was provided by the FY2019 Collections Information (CIS) pool. According to the four-field approach as advocated by Franz Boas, anthropology can be divided into biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology. Where possible, I have divided the collections I will be profiling into these fields. This post concerns two biological anthropologists.

Grover Sanders Krantz (1931-2001)

Grover Krantz at age 40. The Grover Sanders Krantz papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Grover Sanders Krantz was a biological anthropologist who was an expert in primate bone structure and was considered a leading authority in hominoid evolution. He was also known for his interest in cryptozoology. These research areas are included in his papers at the NAA. His other research interests included early human immigration to America, sex identification of skeletons, and the origin of language and speech. He authored numerous journal articles and books on these subjects, including Climactic Races and Descent Groups (1980), The Process of Human Evolution (1981), and Geographical Development of European Languages (1988). He earned his B.A. and M.A. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1955 and 1958, and his Ph.D. from the University Minnesota in 1970. He taught for thirty years at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington (1968-1998).

Krantz’s devotion to the study of biological anthropology was so intense that he told an NAA staff member that he wanted to keep teaching after he died. He arranged to have his skeletal remains donated to the National Museum of Natural History’s collections for educational purposes (as well as those of his beloved Irish Wolfhound Clyde). Both his and Clyde’s skeletons were displayed in the 2010 exhibition Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17^th-Century Chesapeake and are currently on display in Q?rius, the museum’s science education center.

Frank Spencer (1941-1999)

Frank Spencer with his cat. The Frank Spencer papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Frank Spencer was a biological anthropologist who is best known for his work on the history of biological anthropology. His early training was in medical microbiology and he worked as a medical laboratory technician. After emigrating from England to Canada, he earned his B.A. from the University of Windsor, Ontario in 1973. He then moved south to the United States and earned his Ph.D. in biological anthropology in 1979 at the University of Michigan with his dissertation "Biological Anthropology, Aleš Hrdlička, MD (1869-1943): A Chronicle of the Life and Work of an American Physical Anthropologist." He then moved east, taking up a post at Queens College, where he remained for the rest of his career. Spencer was the co-founder and editor of Physical Anthropology News and the author and editor of a number of books on the history of physical anthropology including A History of Physical Anthropology, 1930-1980 (1992), The Origins of Modern Humans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence (1984), Ecce Homo: An Annotated Biographic History of Physical Anthropology (1986), and History of Physical Anthropology: An Encyclopedia (1997). He is best known for his book Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery (1990), in which he proposed that the respected doctor Sir Arthur Keith had perpetrated the Piltdown hoax. Ian Langham, an Australian anthropologist, had the same theory, but died before he could publish his work. With the help of Langham’s widow, Spencer incorporated both of their research in Piltdown and its accompanying volume, The Piltdown Papers 1908-1955: The Correspondence and Other Documents Relating to the Forgery (1990). Both Spencer’s and Langham’s research are included in Spencer’s papers at the NAA.

Katherine Christensen
Contract Archivist
National Anthropological Archives