Memory Shards of an Accidental Plains Archaeologist

Abstract

The gist of my essay's title, Accidental Plains Archaeologist, is obviously swiped from Jesse D. Jennings' interesting memoirs (Jennings 1994). I feel free to do so, inserting the qualifier Plains, since my being an archaeologist is re ally much more accidental than in Jennings' case. The story begins in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I grew up generally unaware of my hometown's unique status in Plains anthropology. On the basis of Kuder Occupational Preference Tests in junior and senior high schools, my guidance counselors consistently told me, Your interests are not chan neled. When I graduated from high school in 1951 and applied for admission to the University of Nebraska, I was, in today's parlance, totally clueless as far as an academic major was con cerned. If for no other reason than being a maver ick, I only knew that I did not want to follow my father and older brother into the profession of law. It was thus that I entered my freshman year at the University of Nebraska without a goal other than my hope of avoiding being drafted into the armed forces. Under those circumstances I was enrolled in what was then called Junior Division, which was, I think, code-talk for Arts and Sci ences, Undeclared, or Without an Inkling. I de cided to take courses I would need to fill my gen eral education requirements: English, history, math, Spanish, speech, and, of course, the required Reserve Officer's Training Corps or ROTC. Look ing forward to the summer, I was resigned to re turning to seasonal construction work. Late in the spring my good friend James Bailey, an engineer ing major from Lincoln, informed me that he had gotten a job on a salvage archaeological crew with the Nebraska State Historical Society (NSHS). Since he was the first person to apply for the crew, Bailey had been made the field as sistant. The NSHS, however, still needed more workers, affectionately referred to as shovel bums. Curious about the possibility of getting out of my hometown for the summer and hanging out with several of my buddies, I sought out Marvin F. Kivett at the Historical Society's office, then in the Nebraska state capitol building (Figure 1; see Gradwohl 1994). Kivett (known to his friends as Gus) explained to me that the Society would be working along the Missouri River near Chamber lain, South Dakota, that the crew would live in a camp with tents and no running water, would spend all day digging, and be paid a grand wage of $.75 per hour. This all sounded good to me except the bad news about non-Union wages. The good news was two-fold: a) I would not have to carry a hod, and b) while poverty was apparently a vow archae ologists had to take, silence and chastity were not required. So I joined the crew. The field camp at the Oacoma site (39LM26 and 39LM27) was everything Kivett had promised. We had old army tents for sleeping quarters, a large and very unwieldy surplus bi-pyramidal tent for a kitchen, dining hall, and lab, and A. T. Hill's old trailer for Gus, Caroline, and Ronnie Kivett along with their dog Rocky. Kivett had hired a woman named Bea Rea as a cook, so we did not even have to do our own cooking. We hauled wa ter from Chamberlain in 5-gallon jerry cans. The cans were left in the hot sun all day and thus pro vided hot water for field showers and clothes wash ing. Since Al Rea, on whose land we were camp ing, was a junk dealer of sorts, Bailey and I were able to cover the floor of our tent with marble