DAVID L. BROWMAN

The Peabody Museum, Frederic W. Putnam, andthe Rise of U.S. Anthropology, 1866-1903

ABSTRACT This article explores the intersection of the career of Frederic Ward Putnam with the Peabody Museum of American Ar-

chaeology and Ethnology at Harvard to the history of U.S. archaeology between his appointment as professor in 1866 and his death in

1915. Putnam was also active in institutional developments at Chicago, Berkeley, and New York. [Keywords: Frederic Ward Putnam,

U.S. archaeology, Peabody Museum]

THE PEABODY MUSEUM of Harvard University hasplayed a crucial role in the evolution of U.S. anthro-

pology for sevenscore years, and the individuals at the mu-seum who were involved in the early development of thistrajectory have had a major impact on the current organiza-tion of our discipline. The events there are of particular im-portance in understanding the origins of our discipline be-cause during the late 19th century there were four attemptsto develop academic anthropology at universities in theUnited States; three of them were false starts (Chicago, Clark,and Pennsylvania), with the only successful, continuous pro-gram being the one instituted at Harvard (Darnell 1998:106-110),

A large part of this success I believe was due to the lead-ership of Frederic Ward Putnam. And Putnam's contributionswere more than just his 400 publications, his development ofmethodology, and his establishment of anthropology at Har-vard. For example, he was also a cofounder of the journalAmerican Naturalist and had a critical role in the early devel-opment of the journal Science. He was instrumental in help-ing to found the anthropology programs at the AmericanMuseum of Natural History, Columbia University, and theUniversity of California-Berkeley and also played a lesser rolein establishing anthropology at the Field Museum in Chi-cago, And, furthermore, he was involved in the founding ofthe Archaeological Institute of America and the AmericanAnthropological Association.

The importance of Putnam was more appreciated in thatperiod than it is now a century later. Franz Boas refers tothere having been but three great American anthropologistsin the late 19th century: Daniel Garrison Brinton, John WesleyPoweil, and Putnam. Giving testimonial to the contributionsof Putnam, Boas further notes,

We owe to you the development of steady, painstakingmethods of field research and of care in the accumulationof data; not detached from the ends sought by Powell, notwithout ideas as to their interpretation, but looking for-ward steadily and firmly toward a goal that cannot be at-tained in a few years, nor in a generation—that must bebefore our eyes all the time, and the attainment of whichdemands our whole energy. No trouble has been too greatfor you in the pursuit of this aim; and to your facility ofcreating enthusiasm among half-willing friends of sci-ence, Anthropology owes much of what it is. [quoted inTozzer 1909:286]

Others of Putnam's contemporaries were equally apprecia-tive of his contributions, Thus, Edward Morse calls him "thefather of American archaeology" (1915:6), Clark Wissler writes"that Putnam is the father of municipal anthropological re-search institutions in America" (1915:315), and Alfred Tozzerstates that Putnam could be said "to have been, almost liter-ally, the founder of a new branch of knowledge in America...and . . . the prime force behind anthropology for almost fiftyyears" (1936:125). And the anonymous penner of the Ameri-can Council of Learned Societies biographical note on Put-nam is of much the same opinion as Tozzer, noting that "inthe rise and development of anthropology in America, Put-nam played a leading, perhaps the foremost, part and waslargely responsible for its acceptance as a university study"(1980;815). Putnam clearly is one of the key figures in theorigins of Americanist anthropology, yet today, in compari-son to Boas, for example, we often hear relatively little abouthim and his contributions.

A brief review of the origins of the program at the Pe-abody Museum helps in setting the context tor Putnam'sworks. But it should be noted as well that this article takes issuewith the often held beliefs that Putnam was onlv a "museum

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 104(2) 508-519 COPYRIGHT O 2002, AMERICAN ANTHROPCHOGICAI ASSOCIATION

Browman • The Rise of U.S. Anthropology 509

man" and that the training offered by the Peabody Museumat the time was elitist (e,g,, only for rich white males).

JEFFRIES WYMAN AND THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OFTHE PEABODY MUSEUM

Jeffries Wyman was recruited from the Lawrence ScientificSchool at Harvard, where he taught anatomy and had hisown small Museum of Comparative Anatomy, to be the firstcurator of the Peabody Museum, a position he held from1866 until his death in 1874. Wyman's focus during theearly development of the Peabody Museum was essentiallyon archaeology, His interest in archaeology extended back atleast as early as 1846, when he began a correspondence withEphraim G. Squier on mound builders, an interest that led tohis first exploration of shell mounds in 1852 (Murowchick1990:57). Prior to the formation of the Peabody Museum,Wyman was involved in collecting expeditions to Peru,Chile, and Argentina. By the time he was appointed first cu-rator of the Peabody Museum, he had developed a pattern ofexploring shell mounds in Massachusetts and Maine in thesummer and then, in the winter, because of poor health,heading south to Florida, where he continued his explora-tions of shell mounds (Murowchick 1990:57-59).

During his first two years as curator of the Peabody Mu-seum, Wyman was very active in trying to rapidly developcomparative collections of artifacts. The museum opened in1866 without a building (the first building was not com-pleted until 1877), instead borrowing space in Boylston Hall,where Wyman had housed his Museum of ComparativeAnatomy. Frances Mead (1905:67), later the collections ad-ministrator for Putnam, has noted that the museum openedwith only about 50 items in a cabinet, collected from variousplaces on campus. Wyman set about obtaining additions tothe collections from the Boston area, securing 36 donors thefirst year (Brew 1966a: 7), with items from the Boston Athe-naeum, Massachusetts Historical Society, Smithsonian Insti-tution, and several individual collectors (Dexter 1980:184;Willoughby 1923:496).

Because Europe was the center of anthropological in-quiry at the time, Wyman sought to quickly develop a com-parative collection of European materials. Consequently, thefirst year he managed to purchase 264 items from northernEurope, but the major European collections were made dur-ing the second year, when he purchased roughly 3,000 itemsfrom Gabriel de Mortillet's collection of Paleolithic tools,1,559 items from the Wilmot J. Rose collections from Den-mark, and 865 items from Clement's Swiss Lake dwelling as-semblage (Brew 1966a:7; Willoughby 1923:496; Wyman 1869:6,8),'

These collections were purchased to solve one of thecritical needs, Wyman argued to the trustees, that the Pe-abody Museum faced, that is, "the gathering of means formaking direct comparison between the implements of thestone ajje of the old world and the new" (1869:11). The in-itial focus that Wyman established for the Peabody Museumhence was limited to archaeology. Hinsley has

that, because Wyman had started out trained as a natural sci-entist, he was more comfortable with archaeology, in that"shell-heap archaeology offered an effortless transition fromnatural history to human prehistory, for the observationalskills necessary for analysis, identification, and enumerationof shells and bones of animals, birds and fish were easilytransferred to stone implements or potsherds" (1989:85).

Upon Wyman's death in 1874, the renowned botanistAsa Gray stepped in to serve as interim curator until Putnam'sappointment in 1875; then Gray returned to Harvard's Mu-seum of Comparative Zoology to subsequently become its di-rector until his retirement (Ingersoll 1885:474). There is akind of seamless continuity here that is useful to note: Put-nam had been enrolled from 1856 to 1864 at the LawrenceScientific School of Harvard, taking classes with three distin-guished natural science professors there: Louis Agassiz, Gray,and Wyman. Thus, not only did the leadership of the mu-seum pass from teachers to student but the roots of Putnam'sapproach to anthropology derived in large part from thetraining he secured from them in the natural sciences, train-ing, for example, that carried over into his view of how toproperly organize a museum (as I note below) and his initialapprentice or internship system of training the first cadre ofstudents (Browman 2002a:210-217; Hinsley 1985, 1992).Gray serves as a significant transitional figure because he notonly represents a continuation of the natural science traininggenre and was, with Wyman, an old professor of Putnam's,but also served as a key member of the committee in the in-itial appointment of Putnam as curator, subsequently push-ing in 1885 (in his continuing capacity as a member of theMuseum's Board of Trustees) for the naming of Putnam as thefirst professor of anthropology, an appointment finalized in1887 (Dixon 1930:210; Dorsey 1896:79; Hinsley 1992: 132).

PUTNAM AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PEABODYMUSEUM

Frederic Ward Putnam (April 16, 1839-August 14, 1915) tookover a position from Gray that involved administration, col-lections management, curation, and fund-raising—but onlylater teaching. With Putnam's appointment to the museum,there was a shift in emphasis from archaeology alone, as hadbeen the case under Gray's and Wyman's direction, now intoethnology and physical anthropology as well (Brew 1968:16).The first task Putnam had. however, was to properly housethe collections that the museum had amassed. This wassolved by the construction of the first part of the current mu-seum building on Divinity Avenue, beginning in 1876. fin-ished in late 1877, and inaugurated in 1878 (Dexter 1980:185; Mead 1905:67; Willoughby 1923:498). Putnam hadzealously worked to increase the holdings of the museum, sothat the inventory that had stood at roughlv 8.000 items atthe time of Wyman's death in 1874 had grown to more than30,000 items by the time the new building opened to thepublic in 1878 (Dexter 1980:1861. Putnam also worked tire-lessly to build the library, so that near the time of the 40thanniversary ot the museum (1906). the library was the largest

510 American Anthropologist • Vol. 104, No, 2 • June 2002

anthropological collection in North America with 6,000items—roughly 3,000 books and 3,000 pamphlets (Mead1905:78).

As Mark (1980:14-15) notes, Putnam brought to anthro-pology the careful, painstaking scientific methods he hadlearned under Agassiz, Gray, and Wyman. Putnam also em-ployed the principles of museum collection organizationthat he had learned from his work at the Museum of Com-parative Zoology with Agassiz, hence arranging ethnologicaland prehistoric collections by historic context and geo-graphic areas rather than by evolutionary schema or industry(Dorsey 1896:82; Mark 1980:19), a principle he also mayhave imbued early on in his friend and colleague Boas.2 Atthis time, the Smithsonian Institution and the Bureau of(American) Ethnology organized their material culture col-lections by presumed evolutionary schemata and by indus-try, regardless of the area of origin of the artifacts, and influ-enced most of the rest of the nascent museums in thecountry to do the same (Mark 1980:22). The differences inapproach between the Smithsonian and Putnam in terms oforganizing collections were reflected in differences in collect-ing methods as well. Hinsley (1999:147) notes that Putnamincreasingly began referring to "thorough" and "systematic"methods in the period of 1885 to 1887 and later, indicating adeveloping rigor of methodology. For archaeologists, the re-sults of Putnam's work in developing systematic researchtechniques are best known as the "Peabody Museum"method and the "Chicago" method of excavation (Browman2002b).

PUTNAM AND THE TEACHING OF ANTHROPOLOGY ATHARVARD

Putnam had been trained in an apprentice or mentor type ofinternship system first at the Essex Institute in Salem, byHenry Wheatland, and then at the Lawrence ScientificSchool of Harvard, by Agassiz, Gray, and Wyman. This is thepedagogic system he utilized when he first began training in-dividuals in anthropology at the Peabody Museum.

The other major means of disseminating informationthat he employed during the early years of his tenure was theuse of a series of public lectures, capitalizing on the popular-ity of what has come to be known as the "Chautauqua" sys-tem in New England at the time. Because he was not offi-cially a member of the faculty of Harvard until the PeabodyMuseum merged with Harvard in 1897, these public lectureswere given at places such as the Lowell Institute of Boston,the "Harvard Annex' for women students (later renamedRadcliffe), and other public venues. As early as 1881, he wasgiving a regular series of half a dozen lectures, especially forsubscribers to the museum's Research Fund, and he had in-stituted a "free course of nine lectures" for the Radcliffe stu-dents (Dexter 1980:186; Putnam 1882:70-71). By 1886, hehad developed a scries of 38 lectures,' mainly on U.S. archae-ology, which IK- advertised hi a promotional brochure. Al-though, as notcil above, Putnam was proposed tor a profes-sorship in anthropology in 1885 and confirmed to this post

in 1887 (Brew 1968:19), because of the institutional separate-ness of the museum and the college, his appointment as pro-fessor did not initially carry with it any mandated additionalteaching duties.

Putnam explicitly noted his "first" students in his an-nual reports to the trustees; these were three individualswhom he recruited to work with him at the museum in the1880s: Cordelia A. Studley, from 1881 to 1886; John C. Kim-ball, from 1883 to 1887; and William B, Nickerson, from1885 to 1886. The experiences with these volunteer "stu-dents" helped Putnam develop his later formal program, par-ticularly with his emphasis on funding. Putnam writes, re-garding the loss of these first students, "Two of our formercollaborators have been obliged for pecuniary causes to seekother fields of labor, and the loss of their assistance is one ofthe reasons that has led me to suggest the possibility of thefoundation of a form of scholarships, by which means mightbe at hand for the support of deserving students or assis-tants" (1887:568). Hence, when the Harvard University fac-ulty voted at its meeting of December 9,1890, to officially es-tablish the Department of American Archaeology andEthnology for the purpose of offering instruction for A.M.and Ph.D. degrees (1891.98), Putnam had in place two finan-cial fellowships—the Thaw and the Hemenway—and soonadded a third and a fourth—the Winthrop and the Austin.

What can be called Putnam's second group of students,but his first officially recognized students, was made up ofthose who enrolled in 1890, when a formal curriculum hadbeen approved. These students included two graduate stu-dents, George A. Dorsey and John G. Owens, and three un-dergraduate students, Marshall H. Saville, Frank H. Genodette,and Allan Cook (Dexter 1980:188). Dorsey and Saville wenton to careers in anthropology—Dorsey at the Field Museumin Chicago and Saville at the American Museum of NaturalHistory and Columbia University; Owens died in Honduras,and Cook died in the Philippines, both while involved in Pe-abody Museum work; and Gerrodette, after completing anA.M. in anthropology, went on to become a lawyer.

Putnam's graduate-degree program required a good dealmore rigor than other training programs of the period.Frederick Starr, writing about the developing field of anthro-pology in this country, quotes the following description ofthe initial advanced anthropology curriculum from a Har-vard brochure:

A course of special training in archaeology and technol-ogy, requiring three years for its completion, will be givenby Prof. Putnam. It will be carried on by work in the labo-ratory and museum, lectures, field-work, and exploration.and in the third year by some special research. The abilityto use French and Spanish will be necessary. For thiscourse a knowledge of elementary chemistn. geology,botany, zoology, drawing, and surging is required, aridcourses in ancient history, ancient arts, and classical ar-chaeology are recommended as useful. 118*12:291]

Two years later, Dorsey (1894;.!72), in an inventory of theanthropology programs around the country, concluded thatHarvard's offering ranked as the best available (an objectiveassessment in spite of the possible conflict of interest he

Browman • The Rise of U.S. Anthropology 511

had), Dorsey indicates that Putnam was offering two specificcourses himself;

1. Course in Special Training in Archaeology and Ethnol-ogy, duration 3 years.2. General Anthropology, with special reference to Ameri-can Archaeology and Ethnology. 31 weeks long, [1894:370]

He goes on to report that

prior to 1890 there were several assistants and studentsconnected with the Museum at irregular intervals and fordifferent periods of time.

In 1890, the Department of American Archaeology andEthnology was announced in the catalogue of Harvard asone in which students properly qualified might becomecandidates for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, and athree year course was offered by Professor Putnam. Thisopportunity was made use of by two students who en-tered the Department in the fall of '90. In the same year,the Hemenway Fellowship with an annual value of$500.00 was founded. Of the two students, one met anuntimely death while engaged in research in the ruins ofCopan, Honduras; the other received his Doctor's degreeat the last commencement.

A still further advance was made in the study of Anthro-pology at Harvard, when a full course (three hours a weekfor the entire year) was thrown open this fall to graduates,and undergraduates who are properly qualified. At pre-sent, eight students are availing themselves of this privi-lege. [1894:372]

In a follow-up report on the Peabody Museum anthro-pology offerings two years later, the course description forthe doctoral program is described as follows:

Anthropology 20. Research CourseA course of research in Archaeology and Ethnology re-

quiring three years for its completion. Professor Putnam,and Dr. Dorsey.

This course will be carried on by work in the laboratoryand Museum, lectures, field work and explorations, and inthe third year by some special research.

For this course a knowledge of elementary chemistry,geology, botany, zoology, drawing, and surveying is re-quired; and courses in ancient history, ancient art, andclassical archaeology are recommended as useful. . . Abil-ity to read French, Spanish and German will be a great aid.[Dorsey 1896:95]

In addition, Dorsey (1896:97) indicates that at that pointthere were three fellowships available to support graduatestudents: Hemenway, $500; Thaw, $1,050; and Winthrop,$200, By the 1896-97 term, two new courses had been added(Dixon 1930:211), with 10 undergraduates and six graduatestudents enrolled (Willoughby 1923:501), and by 1898, twoadditional courses had been added, with three instructors;Putnam, Frank Russell, and Roland B, Dixon (1930:211),

1 have included extensive specifics of the first doctoralprogram descriptions as established in the Peabody Museumto help highlight the point 1 want to make about the rigor ofthe program that Putnam developed, which became one ofthe principal models for later anthropology doctorate pro-grams that developed throughout the country, Although theDivision of American Archaeology and Ethnology had beenestablished in December 1890, the Peabody Museum did not

officially become an integral part of the university until Janu-ary 1, 1897 (Dixon 1930:205, 211), Hence, Putnam initiallyhad the freedom to develop his anthropology program as heperceived was best,

As can be seen in the above citations on the Harvard cur-riculum in the 1890s, Putnam required rigor both in previoustraining before entering his program and in the program it-self. Thus, for example, although for most of the late 19thcentury and on into the early 20th century, official Harvardregulations only required one additional year of work in resi-dence for a Ph.D. after the A.B. (Haskins 1930:451), Putnamrequired minimally three years of work, and the actual normfor Putnam's students of this period was four years (Mark1980:52). And, as a note in further contrast, when Boas es-tablished his Ph,D. program at Columbia University, he fash-ioned it along the lines of the less intensive model of the day,so that during this same period his doctoral students at Co-lumbia were receiving their Ph.D.s only two years after theirA.B.s, taking fewer courses, and writing shorter dissertations(Darnell 1998:188; Mark 1980:52).

Some scholars have suggested the Putnam's programwas only archaeology, not a broader anthropology focus. Ithink the clearest indication of its broader anthropologicalcharacter can be seen by the following list of the first Ph.D.dissertations completed under Putnam's guidance:

• 1894 George Amos Dorsey, "The Necropolis of Ancon"• 1898 Frank Russell, "A Study of a Collection of Es-

kimo Crania from Labrador, with Observations on thePrevailing System of Craniometry"

• 1900 Roland Burrage Dixon, "The Language of theMaidu Indians of California"

• 1900 John Reed Swanton, "Morphology of the Chi-nook Verb"

• 1903 William Curtis Farabee, "Hereditary and SexualInfluences in Meristic Variation: A Study of DigitalMalformations in Man"

• 1903 George Byron Gordon, "The Serpent Motif inthe Ancient Art of Mexico and Central America"

• 1904 Alfred Marston Tozzer, "A Comparative Studyof the Mayas and the Lacandones"

Putnam encouraged study in all fields of anthropology. Har-vard was strong in archaeology, ethnology, and somatology;if the resources were not available at Harvard, then Putnamsent his students to receive additional training elsewhere, aswe do today. Thus, in the cases of Dixon and Swanton, train-ing in linguistics was obtained at Columbia with Boas. Afterthe first few years, Putnam spent increasingly more time out-side of the museum, and the teaching burden at Harvard wastaken over by others, Dixon became the workhorse of the de-partment after receiving his degree, with Tozzer being the laststudent directly supervised by Putnam (Hinsley 1992; 137).and the subsequent Ph,D. students of Putnam's last tew yearsof tenure at the Peabody (until he retired in 1*XW) weremainly taught bv Dixon and TOZAT.

512 American Anthropologist • Vol. 104, No. 2 • June 2002

PUTNAM: DEVELOPMENT OF PROFESSIONALORGANIZATIONS AND JOURNALS

In addition to playing a critical part in the formation of an-thropology at Harvard, and the founding of anthropologydepartments and museums in Chicago, New York, andBerkeley, Putnam played a key role in the founding or devel-opment of journals such as American Anthropologist, AmericanNaturalist, and Science and in the development of major an-thropological societies, such as the Archaeological Instituteof America (AIA), Section H—Anthropology of the AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), and theAmerican Anthropological Association (AAA).

The Archaeological Institute of America

In spring 1879, Putnam, along with Charles Eliot Norton andten other individuals connected with Harvard or local muse-ums,4 sent out a circular letter proposing the formation of a"Society for Archaeological Research.' After receiving morethan 100 positive responses, the project moved forward, andthe founding meeting for the Archaeological Institute ofAmerica was held on May 10, 1879 (Turner 1999:278). Insti-tutional rivalry seems to have been part of the mix, for inspring 1879, at the same time Putnam and his Harvard col-leagues were helping to found the AIA, archaeologists associ-ated with the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. NationalMuseum were involved in the founding of the Anthropologi-cal Society of Washington (ASW).

Initially Putnam seemed to have great hope for the AIA,for he immediately asked Alice Fletcher and other PeabodyMuseum colleagues to join. However, Norton, who had beenelected president of the AIA in 1879 and kept that positionuntil 1890, wrote to a friend in July 1880, "1 don't care muchfor our American Archaeology (though as president of the so-ciety 1 must say this under my breath)" (Sheftel 1979:5).When it became clear the majority of the members of theAIA was of like mind and interested primarily in what we to-day term classical archaeology, Putnam soon let his member-ship in the group lapse (Mark 1980:28, 64).

The AIA became moribund in the late 1890s and at-tempted to rejuvenate its membership by adding new U.S.projects to secure fresh Americanist members. Putnam thuswas enticed to rejoin the group in 1899 and was named tothe Committee on American Archaeology along with Boasand Charles Bowditch. This committee was enlarged twice,as an outcome of a competing set of development strategies,the end result of which was that Fletcher was put in charge ofthe newly founded AIA School of American Archaeology(later the School of American Research) in Santa Fe, whilePutnam and Boas loft the AIA—Putnam to develop an an-thropology program in California and Boas to work on hisone major foray into archaeology, the founding of the Inter-national School of American Archaeology ami Ethnology inMexico City.s

Section H—Anthropology, American Association forthe Advancement of Science

The power base for Putnam in his struggles to influence thedevelopment of anthropology was not only his position atthe Peabody Museum at Harvard but also his long-term asso-ciation with the AAAS. Putnam had been elected permanentsecretary of the AAAS in 1873, a position that he held for thenext 25 years, culminating with his election to president in1898. Within a few years of taking over the position of per-manent secretary, Putnam had helped to establish a newseparate section for anthropology, one that under a reorgani-zation at the AAAS became known as Section H—Anthropol-ogy. As Kroeber has cogently noted, Putnam's AAAS positionwas "perhaps even more deeply influential upon the destinyof scientific endeavor in the New World than is generally rec-ognized" (1915:714). Section H was the venue of yearly pres-entations by Putnam and the major venue where he firstbroached his new ideas on methodology (Browman 2002a,2002b). As noted in greater detail below, it was the locuswhere Putnam recruited a number of individuals into thefield, including a large number of women, which is generallyoverlooked by histories of our field. As one example, Putnamrecruited Fletcher and Matilda Coxe Stevenson to be officialAAAS representatives to lobby Congress in 1886-87 for anantiquities law, and although they were not initially success-ful, this set the stage for the later passage of the 1906 Antiq-uities Act (Mark 1980:78).

American Anthropological Association

It was in the same period during which Putnam, Boas, andFletcher were involved with the new Americanist direction ofthe AIA that they and several others were also involved infirst establishing American Anthropologist as a national (ratherthan local) journal and the founding of the AAA. The ASWhad been putting out a journal called American Anthropologistbut had run into considerable financial difficulties, and thejournal was about to fold. Broader support was needed if itwere to survive. And there was ferment for a national journaldedicated to anthropology.

In 1897, during the newly instituted separate wintermeetings of Section H, which Putnam had helped engineeras permanent secretary of the AAAS, a committee wasformed, chaired by Boas, with Frank Baker. Brinton. WJMcGee, and Putnam as members, and "given power to act to-ward the establishment or adoption of an American anthro-pological journal" (McGee 1898:53). Putnam was a keyplayer in this transformation, although 1 believe his contri-butions are underappreciated. Putnam was president of theAAAS the next year in 1898. when representatives of theAAAS met with the ASW to see if something could be done tosave the journal. In a series ot meetings during 1898. Baker,Boas, Brinton, Cuiin, Dorsev, Hodge, Holmes. McGee, Pow-ell, Putnam, and others met and agreed on establisJting anew national publication (McGee 1903:179). The AAAS (un-der Putnam's leadership) agreed to pay off the debts foiAmerican Anthropologist (old series) mid to proxide the

Browman • The Rise of U.S. Anthropology 513

mechanism for continuing the journal as long as the ASWceded control to a new group being formed under the aegisof Section H—Anthropology of the AAAS, the new groupthat ultimately became incorporated as the AAA. The newjournal, American Anthropologist (new series), was establishedwith Boas and McGee as owners, with the initial editorialgroup in 1898 (Boas 1902:806; Cole 1999:210-211) includ-ing Frederick W. Hodge (a then-independent Washington,D.C, scholar and member of the ASW), Frank Baker (Smith-sonian Institution and ASW), Franz Boas (American Museumof Natural History), Daniel G. Brinton (University of Pennsyl-vania and ASW), George M. Dawson (Geological Survey ofCanada), George A. Dorsey (Field Museum of Natural His-tory), Alice Fletcher (Peabody Museum), William H. Holmes(U.S. National Museum and ASW), John W. Powell (Bureauof American Ethnology and ASW), and Frederic W. Putnam(Harvard University). Thus, two of the major political interestgroups involved were, first, members of the old ASW and,second, a loosely organized Putnam contingent (includingPutnam, Fletcher, Dorsey, and Boas).

The founding of the AAA also had another strong com-ponent of Putnam input, deriving particularly through hisposition as permanent secretary of the AAAS. With Putnamand Brinton's collaboration, Boas made the resolution in1897 at the Section H session of the Annual Meeting of theAAAS that new semiannual meetings of Section H should beinstituted, with the more technical session to be held in No-vember or December each year (our continuing AnnualMeeting date); subsequently, Putnam helped see to it thatthis Section H resolution was approved and instituted by theoverall AAAS governing council (McGee 1897:391; McGee1898:53, 1903:178; Smith 1897). In addition to having ahalf-year session with a more professional focus (Boas 1902:808), the meeting was an attempt to secure a broader atten-dance base. The competition between Putnam and his col-leagues, on one side, and the anthropologists in Washing-ton, D.C, on the other, meant that anthropologists from theASW and the Bureau of American Ethnology often failed toattend the meetings of Section H in the general sessions. Put-nam had hoped that this new winter meeting could be amore neutral ground for both groups to meet (Darnell 1998:251).

High on the agenda of the first winter meeting of Sec-tion H was whether this new session would meet the needsof all anthropologists or whether another separate associa-tion was needed (McGee 1898:54). Although Putnam fa-vored maintaining Section H as the national group, he couldnot persuade the Washington, D.C, anthropologists to goalong with him. However, Section H continued to performthe functions of a national society for the next few years(Boas 1902:808). At the Section H winter meetings of 1901,three interest groups met (one representing the Washingtonaxis; one, the New York axis; and one, the Section H axis[McGee 1903:180]) and hammered out the agreement thatled to the current AAA. While Putnam and Boas preferred tohave the new group limited to professionals, the Washingtoninterest group, led by McGee (Cole 1999:237; McGeel903:

180), did an end-run around Boas and Putnam, which re-sulted in the AAA being founded with an open membership(rather than being limited only to professionals). This newgroup officially took over responsibility for publishing Ameri-can Anthropologist (new series).

Other Publications

Putnam had a hand in developing other professional pub-lishing ventures as well. Even before his influence (i.e., histwo dozen years as permanent secretary having a significanthand in establishing publishing policy) on developing thejournal Science, Putnam had been involved with foundingand influencing other scientific journals. He and three formerclassmates and then colleagues from the Peabody-fundedmuseum in Salem, Massachusetts—Alpheus Hyatt, Edward S.Morse, and Alpheus S. Packard Jr.—established the journalThe American Naturalist in 1868, and Putnam was a coeditorof this journal until 1875, when he resigned to devote moretime to his new Peabody Museum-Harvard curator position.He continued editing a journal series for the museum of thePeabody Academy of Science of Salem and the Essex Instituteof Salem for several years after his appointment at Harvardand, of course, was instrumental in establishing the Papers ofthe Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnologyduring his tenure at Harvard.

PUTNAM: ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Putnam was responsible for the development of museumsand anthropology programs not only at Harvard but at thePeabody Museum in Salem, the American Museum of Natu-ral History and Columbia University in New York, the FieldMuseum of Natural History in Chicago, and the Lowie Mu-seum and University of California at Berkeley. Putnam wasnamed first a curator and then director of the Essex Institutefrom 1864 to 1870, and when the Museum of the PeabodyAcademy of Science of Salem was formed out of a merger ofthe museums of the Essex Institute and the East India MarineSociety, through an endowment from George Peabody in1867-68, Putnam became the director of that museum from1869 to 1873 (Dixon 1930:207; Tozzer 1936:126). Putnamalso continued his association with the Essex Institute, serv-ing as its vice president from 1871 to 1894 (Boston EveningTranscript 1915; Boston Sunday Herald 1915). The formationof the Museum of the Peabody Academy of Science of Salemwas the result of the active collaboration of Putnam with sev-eral of his Agassiz classmates who had left the Museum ofComparative Zoology with him—Hyatt, Morse, Packard, andAddison Verrill (Mark 1980:19). It was at this same time, in1868, that Hyatt, Morse, Packard, and Putnam had foundedThe American Naturalist.

In early 1890, Putnam wrote to the director of the 18^3World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, proposing thathe should help In developing a major anthropological ilis-play at the exposition. Putnam was appointed chief of De-partment M, Department of Archaeology and Ethnology, forthe exposition and spent a major portion ot his time between

514 American Anthropologist • Vol. 104, No. 2 • June 2002

1891 and 1893 developing and staffing the anthropologicaldisplays. Among the individuals he hired to help him wereBoas and a number of colleagues associated with his work atthe Peabody Museum (Dexter 1966b:153, 1966c:315; Putnam1893:198-203). After the exposition closed, Putnam arrangedfor the anthropology collections to be transferred to what be-came known as the Field Museum. Putnam was one of theincorporators of this new museum and had expected to bemade a trustee. When this did not happen and politics be-came intense, Putnam left, after ananging for Boas to stay onin charge of the collections (Mark 1980:36).

Almost immediately after resigning from the ColumbianExposition and Field Museum positions, Putnam accepted ajoint appointment in 1894 at the American Museum of Nat-ural History (AMNH) in New York, where he had responsibil-ity for developing the anthropology department, a job thathe held until 1903. Although the AMNH Division of Archae-ology and Ethnology had been established in 1889, anthro-pology only became central to the program after Putnamcame in 1894. One of Putnam's first acts was to rename the"Archaeology and Ethnology" division the "Anthropology"division to be more inclusive (Darnell 1998:140). Because thearrangements for Boas at the Field Museum had also turnedsour, Putnam hired Boas as his first assistant in 1894 and by1896 had succeeded in getting Boas a joint appointmentwith AMNH and Columbia University. Putnam recruited Ro-land B. Dixon, AleS Hrdlicka, Alfred L. Kroeber, George H.Pepper, Marshall H. Saville, Harlan I. Smith, and John R.Swanton to work on various projects during his tenure atAMNH (Dexter 1976:306) and was a key player in the devel-opment of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition that began in1897.

Putnam was also involved with his colleagues in estab-lishing anthropology at California during this period. Talksbegan with President Benjamin 1. Wheeler and Phoebe A.Hearst, one of the university's regents, about establishing aprogram at the University of California in 1900. Putnam hadknown Hearst from her previous dealings with the develop-ment of archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania Mu-seum in Philadelphia and during his activities in helping toadvise the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia ondeveloping anthropological expertise. In 1901, an advisorycommittee was named consisting of Putnam, Wheeler, andHearst, along with a couple of Putnam's colleagues (Boas,Fletcher, and Zelia Nuttall) and J. C. Merriam from theBerkeley campus, to operationalize this program (Thoresen1975:266). The committee recruited Kroeber (who had beenBoas's first Ph.D. student at Columbia in 1901) and Pliny E.Goddard (a former missionary to the Hupa and a student inphilology under Wheeler) to form a new department, alongwith Putnam in a supervisory position. After concern was ex-pressed regarding his availability, Putnam resigned from hisposition at the AMNH In 1W3 to take on this Berkeley ap-pointment, which he retained until 1909, when he resignedboth this position and his Harvard position because o\ in-creasing ill health ([V.xter 196oa, i%6b, 1966c; ihoresi-n1975).

Putnam was a contributor to the professionalization ofU.S, anthropology through his development of museum re-search programs and advanced degree-granting programs,part of the larger pattern of the shift in the social sciences tothe development of separate academic departments, promot-ing the emergence and growth of social science disciplines(Ross 1979:121). Putnam's Section H of the AAAS was a partof this professionalization trend. Among the committees thatSection H established was one on the teaching of anthropol-ogy, which was changed from a provisional committee ofSection H to a standing committee of the AAAS in 1900, withits initial official AAAS committee membership of GeorgeMacCurdy as chair and Boas, Holmes, McGee, and Russell asmembers (Baskerville 1900:6). As chaii, MacCurdy (1902:211)reported a tremendous growth in the development of an-thropology in only a few short years, noting that in the com-mittee's 1899 survey, only 11 institutions in the UnitedStates were offering any anthropology courses but that inonly two years time, by its 1901 survey, this had mushroomedto at least 31 institutions offering anthropology courses.

PUTNAM AND RECRUITMENT

Putnam utilized his position at the Peabody Museum and asthe permanent secretary of the AAAS (including his workwith Section H as well) to recruit a large number of individu-als into anthropology, both men and women. Because manyof these individuals were amateurs, or avocational scholars,there has been a tendency for them to be overlooked, almostto the point of invisibility. Once he was appointed as curatorat the Peabody Museum, Putnam began an extensive corre-spondence with avocational anthropologists around thecountry; inviting them to visit with him in Cambridge, writ-ing them letters of instructions on how to properly securespecimens, in some cases sending them on excavations, andananging for the Peabody Museum to obtain their collec-tions. Hinsley has recently characterized Putnam's interac-tion with individuals during the early period of his tenure atthe Peabody Museum as a "correspondence school . . thatfunctioned simultaneously as a collecting arm for the Pe-abody Museum" (1999:144).

Harvard is commonly seen as part of the "Eastern estab-lishment," a sort of private club for rich "WASPs" (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants)—and perhaps rightly so. But this stereo-type was not the pattern for Putnam. One of his recruits, therailroad telegraph operator Nickerson, mentioned above, istypical of the individuals he enlisted though his "correspon-dence school" methods, and his extensi\-e support of Boasbelies any religious bias.

Putnam also worked closely with First American/Ameri-can Indian students. For example, one was Antonio Apache,a Chiricahua Apache educated in the East, including Har-vard, who had been befriended there by Putnam (Purdue1996:107). Putnam subsequently hired him to collect materi-als from the Southwest for the 18^* Columbian Expositionin Chicago, and later he collected materials for Dorsev of theField Museum Putnam was also active in the training of

Browman » The Rise of U.S. Anthropology 515

William Jones. Jones, an American Indian born on the Saukand Fox Reservation in Oklahoma, had entered Harvard in1896, originally intending to prepare to go to medicalschool, but then he met Putnam and changed his major toanthropology, writing in his journal of March 7,1897:

My meeting with Professor Putnam was the very nicesttalk 1 believe 1 ever had with an elderly man, exceptingperhaps one or two with Dr. Bancroft. He took me rightin, and told me just exactly what 1 wanted to know with-out the least possible questioning of my part except oneor two times. I am afraid my dreams of ever becoming adoctor are all thrown aside. The field he opened out to meis certainly wide, with room enough for hundreds of intel-ligent workers. [Rideout 1912:41]6

Putnam provided Jones with the Winthrop scholarship forthe next two years, from 1898 through 1900, and notes in hisannual report that "Mr. William Jones, Winthrop Scholar,has made a special study to determine the language and cus-toms of the former Indians of Massachusetts, in connectionwith his researches upon the Algonkins, to which Indianstock he belongs" (1900:272). After Jones received his A.B.with honorable mention in anthropology from Harvard in1900, Putnam sent him (Rideout 1912:70) on to work withBoas at Columbia University, where he received his A.M. in1901 and his Ph.D. in 1904.7

Putnam was also very actively involved in recruitingwomen to the discipline. Because the men have tended tohave a bit more visibility, his work with them is better re-ported; meanwhile, his work with women is less well known.To help women in anthropology secure scholarly recogni-tion, Putnam was involved in getting nearly a score of themelected to membership in the AAAS and also was able to se-cure appointments or other linkages for many of them withthe Peabody Museum.8 As Rossiter observes, "Putnam's influ-ence and importance appear all the greater when one com-pares the women's performance in Section H of the AAASwith their reception by the ali-male Anthropological Societyof Washington in 1885" (1982:80). This latter group rejectedwomen as unfit for membership for nearly two decades.

Listed alphabetically in Table 1 is a sample of some ofthe types of linkages between Putnam and the Peabody Mu-seum with various women who contributed to the growth ofanthropology.9 It will be immediately appreciated that thislist involves a wide diversity of types of interaction. Some ofthe names, such as Fletcher, Smith, and Stevenson, may befamiliar already, but others are less prominent. Putnamworked with women involved in the more "acceptable" sup-port roles of the Victorian period, as well as women "break-ing the mold" doing independent research. This "linkage tothe Peabody Museum" list only indicates part of the breadthand variety of interactions and support Putnam provided tothe women he helped recruit and encourage, and his heavyinvolvement in this area is something, 1 submit, that has notpreviously been broadly recognized.

In addition, Putnam made sure that the anthropologyclasses were available to the women students of Raddiffe. Asnoted above, he began offering regular lectures for Radcliffc-

students as early as 1881. And once the Harvard College cur-riculum had been officially established in 1890, this appar-ently also involved him cajoling his staff to offer the sameclasses twice, for at that time at Harvard undergraduateclasses were segregated by sex. Thus, for example, "GeneralAnthropology" had an enrollment of 13 undergraduates inHarvard College in 1899 but was repeated for five Radcliffestudents, and in 1900 it had 20 Harvard College students butwas repeated for 10 Radcliffe students. Female graduate stu-dents had a different status, so that in the 1900-01 term, the"Primitive Religions" course had three Harvard students butalso one Radcliffe graduate student taking the class withthem (Mead 1914:6).

COLLABORATION OF PUTNAM AND BOAS

An aside is useful at this point, 1 feel, to comment on the re-lationship between Boas and Putnam. Boas, as depicted byCole (1999) as well as others, was an assiduous self-promoter,whereas Putnam was a much more modest individual. Theresult of this behavioral difference has been that we hear a lotmore about Boas than we do about Putnam. In addition, Ihave discovered in conversations with colleagues the general"folk knowledge" belief that, because of some events that oc-curred later, Boas and Putnam were less than congenial com-petitors. But my reading of the documents is that any possi-ble significant breach between Boas and Putnam did notoccur until 1902-03. For the majority of the time frame inquestion (1866-1903), the two were firm friends and activecollaborators. During this period, Putnam materially pro-moted Boas and arranged for most of the jobs that supportedBoas throughout these early years.

It was at the Annual Meeting of the AAAS in 1886 thatPutnam met a bright young German scholar who was look-ing for work and was so impressed with this researcher—Boas—that he assisted him in securing the position of assis-tant editor on the AAAS journal Science, a position that Boasheld from 1887 to 1889, the first of many positions Putnamwould find for Boas over the next two decades. They contin-ued in frequent contact while Boas had the position from1889 to 1891 at Clark University in Worcester, only a shortdistance from the Peabody Museum. When Boas left ClarkUniversity, Putnam asked Boas to lecture at Harvard in fall1891 and then hired Boas to work with him as his principalassistant in putting together the anthropology exhibits forthe Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a job Boas had from1891 to 1893 (Cole 1999:144, 152, 154). And when the expo-sition closed down in 1893, Putnam arranged for Boas to beput in charge of the anthropological collections at what isnow called the Field Museum, trom 1893 until Boas resignedin 1894. Coie notes that "in Putnam, Boas certainly had anactive and loyal promoter of his career" (1999:166) and that,when Boas's Field Museum position collapsed, Boas "lookedto Putnam for whatever help he could provide" (1999:177),resulting in Putnam getting Boas a job offer at the AMNMand Columbia University in 1895, which Boas accepted in1896. Buis wrote in 19(K) that, with rvspect to his interactions

516 American Anthropologist • Vol. 104, No. 2 • June 2002

TABLE 1. Examples of Putnam's interactions with 19th-century women in the discipline.

Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, the widow of Putnam's major professor at the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, Louis Agassiz, helpedfound and became president of the School for the Collegiate Instruction of Women at Harvard in 1879, a.k.a. the "Harvard Annex," andshe continued as its president when its name was changed to Radcliffe College in 1893. She and Putnam arranged for him to give lectureson anthropological topics to students in this school, beginning at least as early as 1881 (Putnam Papers, Peabody Museum Archives andCollections Department, Accession File 999-24, Harvard University).Harriet Arnot Maxwell Converse was formally adopted into the Seneca in 1884, and in 1891 she is said to have become the first whitewoman to be named a chief of an Iroquois group, confirmed by the tribe in 1892 (Fenton 1971). She corresponded with Putnam aboutmany ethnological questions and secured a large number of Iroquois ethnographic items for the Peabody Museum.Alice Cunningham Fletcher initiated a correspondence with Putnam in 1878, began work on the Omaha and Nez Perce as a "student" atthe Peabody Museum in 1880, and was appointed in 1882 as an assistant in American ethnology (Dorsey 1896:89; Hinsley 1992:132). In1886-87, Fletcher helped Putnam in his successful lobbying effort to preserve the Serpent Mound in Ohio; based on that experience,Fletcher and Matilda C. Stevenson were appointed in 1888, through Putnam's intervention in part, to lobby Congress on behalf of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) for the first antiquities law (Levine 1994:25; Mark 1980:63, 78). Althoughthey were unsuccessful (Fletcher and Stevenson 1889), their work set the stage for the subsequent Antiquities Act of 1906. Putnamprovided continuing support, furnishing Fletcher with an outlet for publication of papers in both the Proceedings of the AAAS and thePapers of the Peabody Museum, nominating her as the first recipient of the Mary Copley Thaw Fellowship in American Archaeology andEthnology established in 1890 (making her the first woman to hold any fellowship in any discipline at Harvard), as well as working withher on the Archaeological Institute of America and California developments noted in the text (Dexter 1980:188; Dorsey 1896:89; Mark1980:67; Rossiter 1982:98).Phoebe Apperson Hearst was a philanthropist whose initial contributions were mainly to the University Museum of Pennsylvania. Shehelped fund fieldwork by Alice Fletcher, Zelia Nuttall, and Sara Stevenson, as well as others such as Cushing, Putnam, Reisner, and Uhle.but in the history of our discipline is perhaps best known for her work with Putnam in the development of an anthropological initiative atthe University of California-Berkeley (Mark 1988:281, 286).Mary Porter Tileston Hemenway was another philanthropist who very explicitly supported the work of women in archaeology, making anumber of grants to Americanist archaeology and also to the Peabody Museum. Here she utilized part of her inherited estate to establishone of the major fellowships in 1890, which helped allow anthropology to survive and flourish at Harvard, and worked closely withPutnam on a number of issues (Dorsey 1896:97).Zelia Maria Magdalena Nuttall was appointed as an unpaid special assistant in Mexican archaeology at the Peabody Museum in 1886.Putnam had tried to get her to accept the more intensively involved position of curator of Central American archaeology, but she declined(Dorsey 1896:90; Parmenter 1971:640). During part of her tenure at the Peabody Museum, she, like Fletcher, also was a Thaw Fellow; shewas active in Section H of the AAAS; and she was tapped by Putnam to serve as one of the judges of the 1893 World's ColumbianExposition.Alice Edmands Putnam was one of three children from Putnam's first marriage, ended by the death of his wife (Boston Evening Transcript1915; Boston Sunday Herald 1915; Tozzer 1936:125). Alice was hired as a research assistant in the Peabody Museum in 1886 and workedthere the next two decades (Hinsley 1992:132, 1999:148). Her papers at the Peabody Museum contain many letters with her fatherdiscussing research and management issues; when Frederic Putnam's health began to fail, she served as his "eyes and ears" at manymeetings in his stead (Putnam Papers, Peabody Museum Archives and Collections Department, Accession File 999-24, Harvard University).

Erminnie Adelle Platt Smith, a cousin of Putnam's, was elected to membership in the AAAS in 1876. She was the first woman doinganthropology to be published in the journal Science and perhaps the first American woman to conduct scientific anthropologicalfieldwork. When she was elected as secretary of Section H in 1885, she became the first woman scientist to hold any office in the AAAS(Lurie 1966:32, 41, 1971:312).Matilda Coxe Evans Stevenson, or Tilly, was actively involved in collecting archaeological and ethnographic specimens in the Southwestand joined with Alice Fletcher in 1887-88 representing both the Women's Anthropological Society of America and the AAAS, at Putnam'sbehest, to lobby for legislation to try to create a park including Mesa Verde and the Pajarito Plateau. She was also recruited by Putnam toserve as one of the five women judges composing the Jury of Awards for Ethnology at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893(Rossiter 1982:98).Sara Yorke Stevenson was invited by Putnam to be in charge of ethnographic exhibits at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicagoin 1893; she also served on the Jury of Awards for Ethnology at the exposition and continued to receive strong support from Putnam forher endeavors at the University of Pennsylvania Museum until she resigned from her position in 1905 (Browman 2002a:231-232: Rossiter1982:98).Cordelia Adelaide Studley was appointed assistant in somatology at the Peabody Museum in 1882 and thus became the first physicalanthropologist at the museum (Brew 1966b:30). She continued working in this position through 1887 (Putnam 1887:5681. but heruntimely death terminated what was developing into a notable career.

Mary Sibbet Copley Thaw was another philanthropist contributing to the growth of women in the field, establishing one ot the majorfellowships in U.S. archaeology and ethnology at the Peabody Museum in 1890. Over 800 people came to the reception held in 1891 inWashington, D.t.., to honor the first Thaw Fellow, Alice Fletcher; later Zelia Nuttall was also partly supported by a Thaw Fellowship(Dixon 1930:211; Mark 1980:73).Sophia Bradford Rlpley Thayer was a major contributor of Plains-area ethnographic materials to the Peabody Museum and acorrespondent with Putnam. She was a cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose house the Thayers frequently visited, where she also metMary Hemenway (Browman 2002u:239).

Note: lor more information on the contributions of all of the above women, see the more extensive discussion and bibliographic listings inHrowman 2OO2a:222-241.

Browman • The Rise of U.S. Anthropology 517

with Putnam during the 1880s and 1890s, "our relationshipis that of fast friends" (Cole 1999:224).

It seems that only with Putnam's development of the an-thropology program at Berkeley in 1901 and 1902, at variancewith Boas's ideas of what should be done, and Putnam's sup-port of Saville (who had been one of Putnam's first studentsback in 1890) for the Loubat chair of archaeology at Columbiaduring 1902 and 1903, which Boas vehemently opposed, therewas a temporary rupture in relationship between Putnam andBoas. Until that point, the two had been active and congenialassociates. Boas actively assisted Putnam in a variety of venues,and during this period Boas and Putnam worked essentially intandem, although Putnam was seen as the senior partner. Thus,it is in part because of the different personality styles that overthe subsequent years Putnam seems to have somewhat fadedfrom sight, whereas Boas seems to appear more consistently inthe discussions on the origins of our discipline.

SUMMARY REMARKS

Putnam's list of publications contains more than 400 items,and it begins to appear that a list of individuals whom heaided and influenced may reach a similar number. In an arti-cle such as this, one cannot possibly establish all the contextand complexities necessary in the short space allowed; 1 canonly hope to touch on some of the more salient aspects ofhis career. But I believe that I have noted enough of them tomake it clear that both Putnam and the Peabody Museum atHarvard University were major contributors to the initial de-velopment of the field of anthropology in this country andthat Putnam's activities and vision of what anthropologycould and should be have had a significant and lasting im-pact on the field as we know it today.

The sociological history of the development of a disciplineis a complex issue, generally with many competing lines. AsCroissant observes, "The number, strength, and density of intel-lectual lineages and schools greatly affects the framing of re-search questions in a discipline" (2000:189). Hence, a stress onsome of the historical biases and neglected directions of our dis-cipline included in this article is not a mere idle historical excur-sion but, rather, an illumination of part of the broader contextof current directions. That said, it should also be noted that anywork such as this often falls into the trap of becoming a hagiog-raphy. As well, such pieces as this often become paeans of unil-ineal intellectual evolution. To avoid these traps, the context ofthis article is intended to be seen as investigating and highlight-ing only one underappreciated historical thread from the multi-ple roots of our field. As an explicit example of these multilinealorigins, while 1 have argued for three major competing clien-teles (Section H-AAAS/Boston, AMNH/New York, and govern-ment/Washington, D.C.) in 1898-1902, during the formationof our parent professional association, there are clearly addi-tional productive ways to view the multiple historical threadsthat produce the fabric of our field.10

DAVID L. BROWMAN Department of Anthropology, Washing-

ton University-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 64130

NOTES1. Wyman was particularly pleased with the purchase of theGabriel de Mortillet collection. In a letter of April 14, 1868,Ephraim George Squier had suggested to Wyman that the museumtry to buy the Gabriel de Mortillet collection that had been fea-tured in the previous year's exposition in Paris (De Mortillet corre-spondence, Peabody Museum Archives and Collections Depart-ment, Accession File 68-13, Harvard University). This collection inquestion had been displayed at the 1867 Paris exposition of thesecond Congres International Paleoethnologique, which hadchanged its name that year to the Congres International d'Anthro-pologie et d'Archaeologie Prehistoriques (Daniel 1968:63), and alsohad been published in de Mortillet's journal Materiaux pour I'his-toire positive etphilosophique de I'homme.

2. Shortly after Boas started in his assistant editorial position atScience, apparently secured in part through Putnam's assistance, hebecame involved in a rather well known controversy with anthro-pologists at the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. National Mu-seum. Boas advocated the kind of geographic focus on ethnologicalexhibits that Agassiz had imparted to Putnam, and it appears thatPutnam may have passed this on to Boas or encouraged him towrite about it (Boas 1887a, 1887b, 1887c), although later in time,after having worked in a museum for awhile, it appears that Boas(1907) may have somewhat softened his stance.

3. The list of the 38 lectures on U.S. archaeology that Putnam ad-vertised in 1886 includes the following:

1. Chipped Stone [including a review of early man in Amer-ica]; 2. Flaked, Polished and Pecked Stones; 3. Fire, Potsherds[including a discussion on origins of pottery]; 4. Types of Pot-tery [Atlantic coast; Ohio, Cumberland and, Mississippi Val-leys]; 5. Pottery—continued [Pueblo Region; Mexico; CentralAmerica]; 6. Pottery—concluded [Peru; Lake Titicaca; Brazil]; 7.Wood, Bone, Antler, Horn, Shell, Fabrics; 8. The Metals; 9. Vil-lage sites; 10. Burial Places [Little Miami, Cumberland, andCentral Mississippi Valleys]; 11. Mounds and Earth Works; 12.Mounds connected with Ceremonies; 13. Fortifications; 14.Architecture; 15. Types of Man in America; 16. First Period ofthe Stone Age—Early Man in America—Second Period of theStone Age; 17. Fire and Cooking; Potsherds; 18. Types of Pot-tery; 19. Wood, bone, antler, horn, shell, stone, fibres; 20.Copper, Silver, Gold, Iron, Bronze; 21. Village-sites, Burial-places, Burial-mounds; 22. Altar-mounds and Religious-works;23. Fortifications and Architecture; 24. Diverse peoples inAmerica; review of the evidence; 25. Origin of the Americans,Routes of migration; 26. A General sketch of American Archae-ology, Pre-glacial Man in America; 27. The Shellheaps and thestory they tell; 28. American Caves and their contents; 29. TheMounds and their contents; 30. The Stone-grave people of theCumberland valley; 31. Ancient Earthworks and FortifiedTowns; 32. The Altar-mounds of the Ohio valley and the Relig-ious Rites of their Builders; 33. The Ancient Arts of the NorthAmerican Peoples; 34. The Pueblos and Cliff-houses of Utah.Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico; 35. The Archaeology otMexico and Central America; 36. The Archaeology ot SouthAmerica; 37. Ancient Peruvian Art; and 38. The proper meth-ods of Exploration. [Browman 20023:218-21^. table 10.1]

4. This founding group sending out the informational letter sug-gesting the formation of an archaeological interest group, whichbecame the AlA, included Alexander Agassiz, Thomas Gold Apple-ton, Martin Brimmer, Charles \V. Eliot. William Endicott Jr.. Wil-liam Watson Goodwin, E. W. Gurney, Henry P. Kidder. AugustusLowell, Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Callahan Perkins, andFrederic W. Putnam (Kroeber 1915:713; Sheftel 1979:.i>

5. Boas, Bowditch, Putn.im, and their allies believed that the AlAshould support the foundation of an international school in Mex-ico; Fletcher and her allies wanted an American school establishedIn the Southwest. For more Information on the competing ugen-das, see Bowditch 1905; Brownian and GivenN lWb; Dyson 19^sFowler 2000; Hinsley 1986; Mark l̂ KO; and Snead 1991.'2001.

6. The Reverend i ecll F. P. Bancroft was the headmaster ot PhillipsAcademy In Andover. Massachusetts, where lones had schooledfrom 1892 to 1896. It had been on Haiuroft's .idvice (Rideout

518 American Anthropologist • Vol. 104, No, 2 June 2002

1912:34) that Jones entered Harvard, with a plan of going on tomedical school.7. In 1906, Dorsey recruited Jones to work for the Field Museumon an expedition to the Philippines (at the same time Fay-CooperCole was also working for the Field Museum there). Jones was fin-ishing an ethnological research project in the Philippines when hewas murdered by Ilongot on March 29,1909.

8. Putnam seems directly or indirectly involved in the election ofa number of women with anthropological interests to membershipIn the AAAS during his tenure as permanent secretary—includingFrances E. (Franc) Babbitt, Alice C. Fletcher, Cornelia Horsford,Christine Ladd-Franklin, Fanny Hitchcock, Ada M. King, AnitaNewcomb McGee, Zelia M. Nuttall, Alice E. Putnam, Elizabeth D.Putnam, Mary L. D. Putnam, Erminnie A. Smith, Jennie/Jane Smith,Matilda C. Stevenson, Sara Y. Stevenson, Laura O. Talbott, MaryCopley Thaw, and Harriet Newell Wardle. Babbitt, Fletcher, Frank-lin, Horsford, McGee, Nuttall, M. Stevenson, S. Stevenson, andWardle were also elevated to "fellow" status during Putnam's tenure.

9. More details on these interactions can be found in my twochapters on Putnam just published (Browman 2002a, 2002b).

10. The initial draft of this article was materially improved by ar-chival help provided by Sarah Demb, archivist at the Tozzer Li-brary, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, and information sup-plied by Dr. Stephen Williams, director emeritus of the PeabodyMuseum. Six anonymous reviewers provided commentary thathelped me, 1 trust, to sharpen my arguments and clarify discus-sions of evidence, although because of the press of time, thesecomments were only made available to me in summarized form;hence, some cogent corrections or suggestions made by the review-ers on the manuscript may have not been received.

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