1903, he founded the Department of Anthropology at University of California, Berkeley, and served as professor of anthropology and director of the Anthropological Museum there until 1909. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1884.

A major institution-builder in early American anthropology, Putnam’s significance derived primarily from his organizational abilities, his support for and influence on younger men and women (especially Boas and Alfred M. Tozzer), his pioneering work in preserving Serpent Mound in southern Ohio and other sites, and his popularization of North American archaeology. He and Boas jointly trained the next generation of anthropologists in the four-field tradition by dividing the labor: archaeology at Harvard, linguistics and ethnography at Columbia, physical (biological) anthropology at both.

His own archaeological fieldwork of the 1880s in southern Ohio (preceded by explorations in Kentucky and Tennessee and followed a decade later by work in California) established field methods on a new plane, with emphasis on attention to context (spatial, stratigraphic) of specimens, careful recording of the excavation process, viewing each site as a complex unit for purposes of study, and conservative excavation techniques. Deeply embroiled in the controversies of his generation over “ancient man” in North America, Putnam cautiously supported the claims of Charles C. Abbott and others for a presence of 10,000 or more years. Permanently influenced by his early zoological training under Agassiz, Putnam always evinced a preference for close description of the artifactual base and a reluctance to make broader generalizations.

Curtis Hinsley

See also

United States of America, Prehistoric Archaeology

References

For References, see Encyclopedia of Archaeology: The Great Archaeologists, Vol. 1, ed. Tim Murray (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999), pp. 152–154.