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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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/