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Monday, December 7, 2020

Anthropology’s Neighboring Fields: New Virtual Finding Aids for Three NAA Collections

The National Anthropological Archives (NAA) primarily contains the papers of anthropologists, archaeologists, and anthropological societies and institutions. However, there are other disciplines that are connected to anthropology and its work, and these disciplines are also reflected in the NAA’s collections. Today I want to highlight the collections of a geologist (Richard LeRoy Hay), a paleobotanist (C. Earle Smith Jr.), and an animal behaviorist (Richard Lynch Garner).


Richard LeRoy Hay (1926-2006)

Richard LeRoy Hay was a geologist who was best known for his contributions to the fields of sedimentary petrography and archaeological geology. Hay worked with Mary Leakey, a celebrated paleontologist, and her husband, Louis Leakey, on their excavations at Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli in Tanzania. The geological framework that he provided for their excavations helped to place their discoveries into a chronological context.

Annotated photographs of Olduvai. The Richard L. Hay papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Hay earned his B.S. and M.S. in geology from Northwestern University and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He served in the US Army Corps of Engineers (1952-1954) and worked for the US Geological Survey (1954-1955) prior to moving into academia. He then taught at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge (1955-1957); the University of California, Berkeley (1957-1983); the University of Illinois, Urbana (1983-1997), where he was the Ralph E. Grim Professor of Geology; and the University of Arizona, Tucson (1998-2006). He made his first trip to Olduvai Gorge in 1962, when he was at the University of California, Berkeley.

Though he performed geological fieldwork in many other locations, he is best known for his work at Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli because of the paleontological importance of the finds at these locations. Olduvai Gorge has provided the longest continuous known record of human evolution and the development of stone-tool industries.1 In Laetoli, Hay performed a geological analysis of the tuff where a trail of roughly 70 footprints were found. The footprints are believed to have been made by Australopithecus afarensis and provide evidence of the evolution of humans by providing information about the shape of the foot and the development of bipedal movement.2

Annotated photographs of Olduvai. The Richard L. Hay papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Hay published frequently on Olduvai Gorge, and his detailed study of the geologic history of Olduvai, Geology of the Olduvai Gorge (1976), was his most significant publication. He also published on his work at Laetoli, coauthoring “Pliocene Footprints in the Laetoli Beds at Laetoli, Northern Tanzania” (1979) and “The Fossil Footprints of Laetoli” (1982) with Mary Leakey.

Hay was a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the California Academy of Sciences. His work was celebrated in his lifetime, earning him the Geological Society of America’s Kirk Bryan Award in 1978, the Rip Rapp Archeological Geology Award in 2000, and the Leakey Foundation’s Leakey Prize, for intellectual achievement in the field of human evolution, in 2001. His collection is of moderate size, comprised of 25 boxes, and contains correspondence, field notebooks, maps, photographs, data, and documentation of geological specimens.


C. Earle Smith Jr. (1922-1987)

C. Earle Smith Jr. trained in economic botany, which is the study of the relationship between plants and people, at Harvard University, earning his B.A. in 1949, his M.A. in 1951, and his Ph.D. in 1953. He went on to study this relationship between people and plants in an archaeological context, becoming one of the founders of the modern field of archaeobotany.

His research focused on archaeologically recovered plant remains and their usage by humans, studying the early domestication and distribution of corn, cotton, avocado, and beans. His first discovery in this field occurred while he was still an undergraduate, when he discovered the earliest remains of corn found to that point with fellow student Herbert Dick at Bat Cave, New Mexico, in 1948. He continued to pursue his archaeobotanical studies by serving as the botanist at archaeological excavations in Latin America, working primarily in Mexico and Peru.

Photograph of botanical samples from Tehuacan. The C. Earle Smith Jr. papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

In addition to his ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Yucatán, Panama, the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and Australia, Smith worked at a variety of institutions throughout the United States. He was an assistant curator of botany at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and acting director of the Taylor Memorial Arboretum (1953-1958); a curator of botany at the Field Museum of Natural History (1959-1961); the Senior Research Botanist for the Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1962-1969); on the faculty in anthropology and biology departments at the University of Alabama (1970-1987), serving as the acting chair of anthropology department (1981-1986); and the President of the Society for Economic Botany (1979). His collection is comprised of 21 boxes and contains correspondence, research notes, data, manuscripts, publications, and photographs.


Richard Lynch Garner (1848-1920)

Richard Lynch Garner was a self-taught zoologist from southwest Virginia. He studied primate behavior, analyzing the vocal communication of apes. He made sound recordings in zoos starting in 1884, moving on to study apes in their natural habitat in the Ogawai River region in 1892. He asserted that he was able to understand the languages of apes and that he could teach them to speak human languages.3 He brought apes back to America to exhibit them in a travelling show, claiming that he was able to communicate with a chimpanzee named Susie.

Richard Lynch Garner performing studies with a child and a chimpanzee. Richard Lynch Garner papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Garner expanded his studies to observe general primate behavior, spending time in an elevated cage within an area inhabited by chimpanzees and gorillas. His collection also contains his observations about the local people and their customs which he made during his trips to Africa. Garner “saw himself as a defender of paternal southern views of race from northerners and from Christian missionaries”4 and the observations he made in Gabon reflect this perspective.

Garner is a slightly different kettle of fish than Hay and Smith, as his studies did not meet modern standards or methods and many of his conclusions have proven false. Even during his lifetime, he was denigrated by the professional scientific community.5 However, his papers provide a glimpse into early evolutionary study and the colonialist and racially biased outlook which influenced scientific thinkers of his time. Garner’s influence on the academic community is evidenced by the route through which his papers reached the NAA. They were originally in the possession of J. P. Harrington, a noted linguist, whose interest in Garner’s work prompted him to write a biography of the scientist. The collection is quite small, consisting of only five boxes, and contains a diary, correspondence, manuscripts, poetry, data, financial and legal records, maps, biographical material, artwork, and photographs.

 

Katherine Christensen

Contract Archivist, National Anthropological Archives

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1 “Olduvai Gorge,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed November 5, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/place/Olduvai-Gorge

2 “Laetoli Footprint Trails,” Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, accessed November 5, 2020, https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/footprints/laetoli-footprint-trails

3 “Missing Links,” University of Georgia Press, accessed November 18, 2020, https://ugapress.org/book/9780820340609/missing-links/

4 Rich, Jeremy. “Heresy Is the Only True Religion: Richard Lynch Garner (1848–1920), A Southern Freethinker in Africa and America.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 12, No. 1 (January 2013): 65-94.

5 “Missing Links,” University of Georgia Press, accessed November 18, 2020, https://ugapress.org/book/9780820340609/missing-links/