Such incidents, although numerous and as yet poorly researched, were still isolated and disconnected. One of the two traditions behind the rise of historical archaeology, the excavation of contact sites, began to be carried out continuously in regions like the Southwest in the later nineteenth century, but it was not until the first half of the twentieth century that researchers influenced by the direct historical approach and the rise of ethnohistory were significantly drawn to historic Native American sites and the study of European trade goods. william duncan strong and his colleagues on the Great Plains, James A. Ford in the Southeast and, slightly earlier, alfred v. kidder in New Mexico began to examine historic contact sites in an attempt to link known ethnographic groups with prehistoric sequences. Nevertheless, although there were rare exceptions—like Arthur Woodward, who in 1927 started a lifelong study of historic trade goods and industries—few of these excavators gave primary attention to the historic period. Investigation of contact situations would have likely remained a footnote appended to North American prehistoric studies except that in 1930 a major crisis in world society transformed American archaeology.

The Great Depression of 1930 through 1941 and the following post–World War II years massively expanded the number and, more important, the variety of historic sites being excavated by professional archaeologists in North America, and for the first time, the second origin of the field, work on famous European and Euro-American historic sites, rapidly assumed centrality in the creation of an autonomous discipline. Earlier events helped to set the stage. Passage of the 1906 Antiquities Act, which protected historic as well as prehistoric sites, and the 1916 establishment of the National Park Service (NPS) put key elements in place. A few locally or privately organized projects that included archaeology were already under way, such as John D. Rockefeller’s 1927 funding of the restoration of colonial Williamsburg, but it was the 1932 election of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, its numerous programs to combat the Great Depression, and the related 1935 Historic Sites Act that opened the door to historical archaeology.

Significant federal funding of some government programs, including the Civilian Conservation Corps, Works Progress Administration, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, and a desire to reemphasize national heritage in the development of national (and some state) parks and monuments meant that a growing number of archaeologists began to work on historic sites across the United States. These researchers shared a set of common traits: they were professionally trained archaeologists, they were specialists in North American prehistory, they had been educated within an anthropological tradition, and they lacked prior knowledge of historic artifacts and architecture. Because of this common background and new institutional sponsorship supplied by the NPS, which was assigned a central role in organizing projects, these archaeologists formed a small but integrated community of professionals.

As prehistorians they spent the two decades before and after World War II inventing American historical archaeology from whole cloth. The excavation of famous and nationally significant Euro-American sites began, such as G. Hubert Smith’s 1936 work at Fort Ridgely in the Midwest, A.R. Kelly’s 1933 excavation of the Macon Trading Post in the Southeast, Harvey R. Harwood’s 1934 exploration of La Purisima Mission on the West Coast, and Preston Holder’s 1941 testing at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. Some of the archaeologists did one or two projects and then returned to prehistoric research, but a small number made an exclusive commitment to the historic period.

Harrington at Jamestown

One of the converts, jean carl harrington (1911–1998), can be considered the founder of historical archaeology in the United States. He was similar to his colleagues in that he had trained in prehistoric archaeology and anthropology under Fay Cooper Cole at the University of Chicago but dissimilar in that he had a prior background in architectural engineering and one season of undergraduate experience in the restoration and recording of historic missions in the Southwest. When offered an NPS position at jamestown, where a project started in 1934