January 20, 2017
by Maclaren Guthrie
As you may know, the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology is home to a large amount of information and different media stored in its archives. There are site records, maps, soil surveys, field notes, newspaper clippings, and more. For my project, I spent a few days looking through old Indiana State Site Files looking for old newspaper clippings about archaeology. In the archive, everything is sorted by county. So I had to go county by county recording how many newspaper clippings there were, what they were about, and any other notes I thought would be helpful later. My goal was to figure out if there is a difference in the public’s interest in and attitudes towards archaeology by comparing articles from the past to the present.
Since most of the articles in the archives are from the 1930’s, there are a fair amount of articles that mention the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and the work they did relating to archaeology. As part of the New Deal, WPA excavations were credited with uncovering some human remains, relics, and most notably for funding the Angel Mounds excavation in Evansville, Indiana. One clipping from February 1938 discussed that the Indiana WPA director John K. Jennings said that WPA crews could begin work at Angel Mounds in April. Another article shared that the WPA was going to finance the excavation at Angel Mounds with a $200,000 grant. Before looking at these articles, I hadn’t considered how good an investment archaeology was during the Great Depression. Archaeological excavations require lots of fieldwork and lab analysis, and all seemingly without developing a product. According to a newspaper article from December of 1938, the $200,000 WPA grant funded 50 to 100 otherwise unemployed men and women to work at Angel Mounds for 10 months.
There is also a large amount of newspaper clippings about members of the general public finding relics, features, or even remains. For example, in December 1938 a property owner found a burial while constructing a fence. There are many similar stories of residents finding and reporting sites and materials. There were also articles about people visiting sites, and in some cases getting injured while attempting to get a closer look at a discovery.
While reading all of the articles, I kept asking myself if archaeology is perceived the same way now as it was back then. The short answer is, I still don’t completely know. From these articles, it seems like people have always been interested to hear about someone digging up artifacts in their backyard, or just new discoveries in general. I did see that a lot of the articles were about finding or excavating remains or burial sites which doesn’t happen as often now, as laws and ethical codes governing the excavation of human remains have since been emplaced. These articles were collected over years, but I don’t see nearly as many articles about archaeology in the newspaper now as I saw represented in the archives. However, it is important to take into consideration the new methods of news and communication that weren’t available in the early 20th century, like online news, television, and social media. I may not have a solid answer to what I wanted to know yet, but looking through the archives has started me in the right direction.