In its first five decades, American Antiquity has grown from a small publication with relatively limited interests to a much larger publication with wide interests. Its reputation has grown along with its change in size and look (see Figure 1), and it is now recognized internationally as a leader in the presentation of theoretical and methodological advances.

Much of the credit for this growth must be given to W. C. McKern, founding editor (see Figure 2), who devoted four years of intense effort to establish the overall quality and intellectual liveliness that are the journal's hallmarks. This commitment to excellence has been adhered to by the twelve editors who have followed McKern. The salutary growth of the journal, however, has not been without its costs. It is on one of these costs that I focus my attention here.

Among my earliest memories is the shoe box of “Indian rocks” that my father kept on a shelf behind the kitchen stove. These he had found and brought in to keep as curiosities. Although he knew some of the local collectors and at least one buyer for E. W. Payne of Springfield, Illinois, he never thought of selling any of his finds, so when I came along there was a small collection waiting for me.

The amateur archaeologist is a valuable resource that has always been available, but too often one not fully developed. The formation of amateur archaeological societies is one way to coalesce the various interests and skills of non-professional or avocational and professional archaeologists in the pursuit of archaeological knowledge. The founders of the Society for American Archaeology recognized the value of bringing together all those interested in and working in archaeology when the organization was formed in 1934. To this day the Society is not an organization for professionals only: it still encourages and accepts amateurs as members.

In February of 1879, Dr. J. M. Toner, Professor Otis Mason, and Col. Garrick Mallery placed an advertisement in the Washington, D.C. newspapers that read, in part

The Society for American Archaeology officers should be commended for their efforts to celebrate the success of the Society in reaching its relative stability on the occasion of the 50th Annual Meeting to be held in Denver, Colorado in 1985. The recognized founding of the Society took place at the Hotel Roosevelt (Theodore not Franklin) in Pittsburgh, December 28, 1934 following a dinner of Section H of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Interest in the prehistory of America is hardly more than two centuries old, but it is within the last half-century that our concern for preservation and salvage has bloomed. Prior to that time there were individual voices urging study and protection of archaeological sites, but no grass-roots sentiment for protection. This may be largely because most of our antecedents came from the Old World; New World archaeology concerned our past not at all.

Archaeological thought is dynamic. It progresses toward new goals, or veers from one to another and, as the pendulum of orthodoxy swings, the archaeologists' perception of what constitute appropriate foci for research changes with almost every student generation. Given such change and variation, it is small wonder that trends and events of the past rapidly grow dim in the discipline's collective memory; or that current trends are often taken for granted (particularly by students) as being fixed and immutable.

One of the hallmarks of the new archaeology was a shift from “sites” to regions as the investigatory universe appropriate to most archaeological problems (e.g., Binford 1964). This new emphasis was accompanied by a call for multidisciplinary investigations. The precedents usually cited are studies such as MacNeish's Tehuacan Valley project (Byers 1967-1972) and Braidwood's Jarmo project (Braidwood and Howe 1960). Archaeological Survey in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, 1940-1947 (Phillips, Ford, and Griffin 1951), which shares many of these features, is not commonly cited and is one of the more undervalued classics of its time.

The fiftieth anniversaries of the Society for American Archaeology and of its journal are plainly occasions for stock-takings of various kinds. My assignment is to comment on the progress of the theory underlying archaeological activities during this time with particular attention to the situation at the outset. My principal qualification for this task is the simple fact that my period of participation in American archaeology coincides closely with this fifty-year span. I began graduate study at the University of Michigan in the autumn of 1936 and immediately developed a specialized interest in eastern and northern North America. Subsequent discussion reflects this interest; my basic concern is to describe and appraise the intellectual groundwork of archaeology as it was practiced by archaeologists working in this field.

Few archaeologists would dispute the suggestion that the introduction of 14C dating into archaeological research has had a profound influence on the way in which prehistoric studies are conducted. Glyn Daniel, for example, has gone so far as to rank the development of the 14C method in the twentieth-century with the discovery of the antiquity of the human species in the nineteenth-century (Daniel 1967:266). Despite the widespread acknowledgment of the significant role played by the 14C method in contemporary archaeological investigations, no comprehensive, critical, historical review of the specific intellectual history and substantive characteristics of this impact, particularly in American archaeology, has been published.

A monarch who suffered many hours of discouragement, urged his courtiers to devise a motto short enough to be engraved on a ring, which should be suitable alike in prosperity and adversity. After many suggestions had been rejected, his daughter offered an emerald bearing in inscription in Arabic “This, too, will pass” [Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Little, Brown and Company 1937:509].

In 1954, nineteen years after the founding of the Society for American Archaeology and four years after President Harry S Truman signed its enabling legislation, the National Science Foundation (NSF) inaugurated a Program of support for ”Anthropology and Related Sciences,” which expended its entire research budget for that year on two awards. Dr. Gordon Willey of Harvard University received a one year grant of $11,500 to examine “Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Maya Area” and Dr. Robert Braidwood, University of Chicago, was provided with $23,500 to be expended over a three-year period to conduct “Human Population Studies in the Fertile Crescent.”

Archaeologists, as explorers and discoverers, have maintained the myth of objective research far longer than have researchers in other social science disciplines. Focused on action, the “cowboys of science” (Alaskan bumper sticker 1981) have dabbled little in self-reflective criticism.

Now at 50, however, the discipline is becoming aware that our notions of the past, our epistemologies, our research emphases, the methods we employ in our research, and the interpretations we bring to and distill from our investigations, are far from value-neutral.

To aid in the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Society for American Archaeology and its journal, American Antiquity, I was invited to address myself to “Unsolved Problems in New World Culture History.” I have agreed to do this, but, with the editor's indulgence, I would like to rephrase the title as I have, for I think that the word “continuing” more accurately captures the sense of the situation and where our interests lie. As all of us are aware, there are many unsolved problems in Precolumbian culture history—“more holes than cheese,” as the saying goes—but I think I should take a look at some of those with which we are most familiar.

Although Brazil occupies almost half the continent of South America, its archeology attracted little interest until recently from either nationals or foreigners. This is attributable to the characteristics of the remains. There are no buildings of stone, tools and ornaments of metal, or elaborate artifacts of cloth, wood, and bone. Except along the Amazon, pottery is not noted for its aesthetic qualities; even there, complete vessels with well preserved decoration are scarce. Shell middens along the southern coast are spectacular in size but deficient in cultural content. Other sites are predominantly shallow middens containing fragments of pottery, or flakes and minimally shaped tools of stone.

Paul Kirchhoff defined the whole region
(Its trait was a bloody religion)
Then came Caso, Bernal
MacNeish, Willey et al.
And of E. Willys Andrews, a legion.
The Chilam Balam of Chapultepec

By the early thirties Mesoamerican archaeology was already indelibly marked. Ricketson, at Uaxactun from the late twenties, and Caso, at Monte Alban, had the general sequences for the culture area as early as that.

The invitation to review a half century of archaeological procedures, events, and accomplishments in the American Southwest gave me an initial start—not because of the magnitude of the task—but because it brought home the reluctantly admitted fact that I have been around that long as a witness. In younger days the thought of being part of the process of looking into the past for five or six decades was as unfathomable as were some of the ages we were assigning to the remains under study. Even to an archaeologist, the concept of time operates on two levels: the first relates to the past societies of unknown name but of ages measured in centuries or millennia; and the second, intimately personal, infinitely shorter and far more real, is the span of one's own life.

Digging in the earth, uncovering long-buried objects, and musing about past societies have long entranced humankind. As anthropology—including archaeology—became an established scientifichumanistic discipline, universities began offering specialized training and advanced degrees in archaeology. Tracing the beginnings of awarding university credit for digging in the dirt has been a nostalgic excursion, and it has uncovered tales of puzzling prehistoric clues, deep attachments to the essence of a place, camp esprit, and logistical travails made bearable only by the passage of time.

Our editor has asked me to prepare a personal account of the most important processes and events that affected the archaeology of the northeastern United States during the last 50 years. This is no small undertaking, considering that the larger part of our knowledge of the prehistory of this area has accumulated during that time. Moreover, because the inception of my service in unraveling the prehistoric events in the Northeast precedes the period by a decade, it may be difficult to confine my summary to post-1935. As a further complication, my recollections, especially of the precise ordering of the theoretical deliberations, may not be wholly consonant with those of some of my colleagues. Nevertheless, I offer the following necessarily very concise summation.