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

_____________________________

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/

Discovering Culture in the Shanidar Cave Neanderthals

Often, Neanderthals are thought of as a robust and brutish distant relative of modern humans. With their stout features and receding foreheads, the similarities between them and us seem scant at first, but in fact important parallels exist.

Shanidar I excavation photo, 1957 [1].

Between 1957 and 1960, a total of nine Neanderthal individuals were recovered by archaeologist Ralph S. Solecki and local laborers in Shanidar Cave, Iraq. Fragments of lower leg bones of a tenth Neanderthal individual, an infant, have also been found, mixed in with the Shanidar animal fossil remains in the Smithsonian collections. These discoveries date to the Mousterian era at approximately 100,000 to 35,000 years ago. Neanderthals looked different from modern humans and through the 1950s had  erroneously been thought to be less evolved, yet both species engaged in complex social behaviors, including care for sick or infirm individuals and symbolic beliefs.

Culture is a phenomenon found in all human societies and behaviors similar to what we would consider cultural in modern humans were carried out by Neanderthals. For example, like humans, Neanderthals learned to create tools and ornaments made of stone and bone [2]. During the excavations of Shanidar Cave, hearths or firepits were unearthed, which may offer insight into the life habits of Neanderthals. Neanderthals had the capacity to start and maintain fires, and many of the hearths appear to have been strategically built against stones to give off reflective heat [2, 3]. The size of the hearths suggests that some were for communal use and others were reserved for smaller groups, possibly families [3]. Based on this evidence, some scientists believe that like modern humans Neanderthals formed groups and bonds among each other and very likely gathered around the hearths for meals and other activities that point to social practices [3].



Illustration of the hearths excavated at Shanidar Cave,
circa 1957-1960 [1].



Mortuary practices, or behaviors associated with the treatment of the dead, are frequently an index of complex cultural practices. In archaeology, mortuary practices are one way to learn about cultural beliefs. In 1960, Ralph Solecki uncovered a male Neanderthal, aged approximately 40 years at time of death, during the fourth excavation season at Shanidar Cave. The individual, Shanidar IV, was found 7.5 meters below the modern cave floor in damp, brown, sandy soil. This soil was looser than what the excavators had previously encountered and indicated a burial. Shanidar IV was positioned on his left side with head placed towards the south. [4, 5, 9]. Through analysis of the Shanidar IV Neanderthal burial, specifically the soil samples collected during excavation, archaeologists like Ralph Solecki believed that the Shanidar IV skeleton may have been an intentional Neanderthal burial.



Shanidar IV was found on its side in a bent position [1].

In 1975, a palynologist, or a scientist who studies pollen, Arlette Leroi-Gourhan published information regarding the soil samples taken from Shanidar Cave [6]. The samples showed tree pollen that could have blown into the cave by wind, but other samples contained pollen from at least eight species of small, brightly colored flowers that were relatives of hollyhock, yellow flowering groundsel, bachelor’s button, and grape hyacinth, all found today growing around the surrounding hillsides [6]. While this theory has been disputed by later scholars, Leroi-Gourhan suggested that the flower pollen was not brought into the cave by the wind or animals, but perhaps by the Neanderthals for a funerary ritual. The presence of Malvaceaes – a large, singular flower covered in spikes—seemed to suggest that the Neanderthals living at the cave at the time had wandered in search of the flower to place within the grave. This interpretation pointed toward higher cognitive ability within Neanderthals, according to Ralph Solecki [4, 5]. 

Malvaceae was one of the flower families found 

in the soil sample taken from around Shanidar IV [1]. 

Other anthropologists, who reasoned that Neanderthals were not using flowers in funerary practices, disagreed with Ralph Solecki’s interpretation of Shanidar IV. These interpretations stated that wind was able to carry the pollen through the large mouth of the cave [7]. Additionally, rodent species found in the cave are known to burrow and store plant materials, including flowers. These rodents might have been responsible for some of the deposition of the pollen found near Shanidar IV [8]. The pollen samples collected from the burial pit also included tiny fragments of wood and pollen grains of evergreens such as fir, suggesting to some researchers that tree boughs could have been brought to the burial site in addition to clusters of colorful flowers (6). The debate on whether the pollen samples found from around Shanidar IV are indicative of intentional funerary practices or whether the pollen came into the cave through other means continues today. If funerary, this has implications for how Neanderthals and even our own ancestors interacted with and interpreted the world around them.

Due to the extreme rarity of paleontological and archaeological evidence relating to human ancestors living tens of thousands of years ago, our comprehension about the human

lineage is often limited. Therefore, the wealth of archaeological evidence accompanying the Neanderthal remains at Shanidar Cave uncovered by Ralph and Rose Solecki has fundamentally shaped how we understand Neanderthals and our knowledge about the past. Two important goals of archaeologists like the Soleckis are to attempt to give those who lived in the past a voice and for others to have access to this information. These excavations and the Soleckis’ work have inspired new excavations at Shanidar Cave, which will broaden our understanding of how people occupying this cave adapted to their environment [10, 11]. Moreover, the Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki Papers and Artifacts Project is processing the professional papers and cataloging the artifact collections of the Soleckis, including material from the Shanidar Cave excavations, in order to make them more accessible to researchers as well as the public.

To learn more about the Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki Papers and Artifacts Project, check out previous Solecki Project Smithsonian Collections Blog posts. Also, explore the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program’s  Snapshot in Time about Shanidar Cave. The Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki Papers and Artifacts Project was made possible by two grants from the Smithsonian Institution’s Collections Care and Preservation Fund.

Viridiana Garcia and Kayla Kubehl, Interns, Spring 2019

Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History

Sources

[1] The Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

[2] Matt Cartmill, Kaye Brown, and Fred H. Smith, The Human Lineage. (Hoboken, N.J: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

[3] Ralph S. Solecki. “Living Floors in the Middle Palaeolithic Deposits at Shanidar Cave, Northern Iraq.” Unpublished, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

[4] Ralph S. Solecki, 1975. “Shanidar IV, a Neanderthal burial in Northern Iraq.” Science 190 (4217), pp. 880-881.

[5] Ralph S. Solecki, Shanidar: The First Flower People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971). 

[6] Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, 1975. “The flowers found with Shanidar IV, a Neanderthal burial in Iraq.” Science 190 (4214), pp. 562-564.

[7] Robert H. Gargett et al., 1989. “Grave shortcomings: The evidence for Neanderthal burial.” Current Anthropology 30 (2), 157-190.

[8] Jeffrey D. Sommer, 1999. “The Shanidar IV ‘Flower Burial’: A re-evaluation of Neanderthal burial ritual.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9 (1), pp. 127-129.

[9] Ralph S. Solecki, Shanidar, The First Flower People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971).

[10] Tim Reynolds, William Boismier, Lucy Farr, Chris Hunt, Dlshad Abdulmutalb and Graeme Barker, 2015. “New investigations at Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan.” Antiquity: A Review of World Archaeology vol. 89, no. 348

[11] Elizabeth Culotta, 2019. “New remains discovered at site of famous Neanderthal ‘flower burial’” Science, doi:10.1126/science.aaw7586