Hume, Ivor Noël

(1927– )

Ivor Noël Hume was born in 1927 in London, educated in England, and initially entered the profession as the Guildhall Museum archaeologist (1949–1957) exploring the exposed remains, including postmedieval deposits, of postwar London. However, it was not until he crossed the Atlantic in 1957 to assume command of archaeology at another capital, colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, that he embarked on a career of over forty years that helped to transform historical archaeology.

With the support of his wife and professional colleague, Audrey Noël Hume (1927–1993), he continuously built the field within three spheres: fieldwork, public education, and scholarly publication. As a result of his English archaeological training, he introduced the tradition of tightly controlled stratigraphic excavations to colonial sites within and around Williamsburg. Site reports soon followed, but of equal importance were the articles and monographs reflecting the accumulating knowledge of both of the Humes on recovered archaeological assemblages. In 1970, Noël Hume published A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America, a work that revolutionized understanding of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century archaeology in English North America and, by extension, the world. It stands to this day as the only general source for the field.

Noël Hume was set off from his American colleagues not only because he was not an anthropologist but also because of his ability to handle and appreciate primary archival sources—he produced a fully historical archaeology. As early as 1966 he authored 1775: Another Part of the Field, which made him one of the few archaeologists in the United States to publish straightforward history. His archaeological publications have been equally grounded on documentary as well as belowground data. In 1977, the spectacular discovery and areal excavation of the early-seventeenth-century site at Wolstenholme Town in Martin’s Hundred on the James River in Virginia made him equally an expert on the seventeenth as well as the eighteenth century. His 1982 popular Martin’s Hundred and the full site report have given scholarship one of the best-excavated and most fully explored early-seventeenth-century sites (1620–1622) in the world.

Accomplished as a researcher and scholar, Hume has been an equally important advocate for public education. Numerous lectures, articles (see Hume 1979), and well-received books such as Here Lies Virginia (1963) and Historical Archaeology (1969) have vividly and invitingly brought the romance of historical archaeology to the general public. Unlike many of his colleagues, Noël Hume can write clear and readable English. Perhaps no single contribution better combines his efforts in field archival research, careful scholarship, and public presentation than The Virginia Adventure: Roanoke to Jamestown, an Archaeological and Historical Odyssey (1994), one of the most widely read books in the field. He used a combined archaeological-archival approach in this volume to correctly predict the survival and the location of the original jamestown Fort (1607–1620s), which has since been discovered and is being excavated by William Kelso.

Hume’s English training and perspective initially separated him from his U.S. anthropological colleagues, but his productive and insightful scholarship has helped to bridge the Atlantic divide. In January 1967, he was an important participant in the organizational meeting in Dallas, Texas, that created the society for historical archaeology (SHA) and at which he urged an internationalist-global perspective for the new discipline. His membership on the SHA board of directors and vice-presidency of the parallel Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology in Europe helped to link these two organizations in their founding years. Ivor Noël Hume has received many awards, including being made an Officer of the British Empire (1991) for his work in Virginia, and in 1991, the SHA presented him with the highest honor achievable in historical archaeology, the j. c. harrington medal.

Robert L. Schuyler

References

Hume, Ivor Noël. 1963. Here Lies Virginia: An Archaeologist’s View of Colonial Life and History. New York: Knopf.

———. 1966. 1775: Another Part of the Field. New York: Knopf.