by Dr. Barry R. Bainton
Dr. Giddings (the only Brown Professor I had who was always “Doctor” to
me) was a teacher, mentor, and friend during my undergraduate career at Brown.
After I graduated, a year after my entering class, I joined the newly created
Peace Corps and was sent to Peru. Dr. Giddings encouraged me to make a
collection of ethnographic artifacts for the Museum while I was there. I left
for Peru a month after the Gulf of Ton-kin Resolution (August 7th, 1964). This
marked the formal start of the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.
Three months later, I received a letter along with a newspaper clipping
from, Judy Huntsman, Dr. Giddings’ graduate student and fellow worker at the
Museum, announcing his death. Two years later, I returned to Rhode Island with
the collection.
As an undergraduate I
had started out to major in astronomy. But, poor counseling and choices led me
to fail the math courses that were required for the program. I was fortunate
enough to get a student assistant job with the Ladd Observatory, under the late
Prof. Charles Smiley. There I gained some experience dealing with the public
when the observatory was open for public viewing and I got to play with the
telescope. This experience would be very valuable as I later worked at the
Museum.
Smiley, an expert on
solar eclipses, was working on a project to relate Herbert J. Spinden‘s Correlation of the Mayan Calendar in the historical recordings
of the Mayan Indians of Central America, as found in the Dresden Codex, with
the theoretical astronomical calculations of solar eclipses occurrences in
Central America. I became involved in his research and this drew me to
archaeology. When it was obvious that I would not be majoring in Astronomy I
had to look for a new major. That year, the Anthropology Department emerged as
a separate academic department under Dr. J. L. Giddings. When it came time to
declare a major, I selected anthropology, and became one of the first
undergraduate majors in the new department.
One of my first
Professors in anthropology at Brown, was Dwight Heath. Heath was a Latin
American cultural anthropologist and a specialist in the study alcohol use and
addiction. Little would I realize at the time that I would enter both fields
early in my career. Phil Leis, who later became Chair at a rather critical
period in anthropology’s and Brown’s history, joined the department a year
later. While we considered ourselves to be a four- field department at the time
– linguistics was covered by taking an Introduction to Linguistics course from
the Modern Language from W. Freeman Twaddell. Physical anthropology was taught
from a largely human evolutionary perspective evolutionary, but without a
skeletal laboratory component. Something
I would gain in graduate school at the University of Arizona..
In the summer of 1962,
I had applied for a position with the Smithsonian Missouri River Basin Survey
salvage project. And I was accepted. Our team assembled in Lincoln, Nebraska
and then drove off the northwest corner of Wyoming, to where the Yellowtail Dam
was to be built on the Big Horn River. The flood plain was to extend back from
the site in Montana to the area around Lovell, Wyoming. Our job was to survey
the area in the Big Horn Canyon that would form part of the Yellowtail Reservoir
to be created by the dam. In addition, we were to dig sites that looked
promising. The survey was scheduled to take place over the next few summers. At
the same time we worked the canyon beaches and caves, the Bureau of Land
Management had a team going through the canyon surveying anticipated high water
mark and clearing out the vegetation between the river and the high water mark.
I spent the summer traveling, camping,
scouting, and digging in the back country 50 miles east of Yellowstone National
Park – but never got there. Across the river from where we were working, was
the Crow Indian Reservation. Didn’t get there either, however, I had read
Lowie’s The Crow.
The summer was an
adventure. It opened my eyes to the realities of archaeology. For the crew, it
required the sensitivity of a surgeon, patience of an expected parent, and the
hard, tiring, and dirty work of the common laborer. For the archaeologist /dig supervisor,
it was only the first step in a year long process that included the initial
field decision whether do a simple surface survey, or to commit project resources
to digging the site, In either case once found, it required a plan and strategy
to attack the site. Then, the recovered artifacts had to be collected, cleaned,
marked for identification, their contextual information recorded and photographed.
The whole system logged and an analysis begun to prepari for the next season.
And finally, there was the report on the results from this season for the
sponsor and the grant request for further support in the coming year.
If a dig is called for,
a datum (contextual reference point) has to be set. A north-south line (based
on a compass reading) is set out and marked with string and pitons set at
measured intervals. A secondary, east-west line was set-up in a similar fashion
90 degrees to the baseline. The result would, in the end, become a series of
squares in which one dug. Each square became the basis for mapping the coordinates
for the artifacts and features uncovered in the digging process. All had to be
rigorously recorded so that a map of the site and its various levels could be
constructed later back in the laboratory. Archaeology is practice similar to
quality control engineering. You destroy the subject in the process of studying
it.
I spent the summer of
my 21st year as a “professional” archaeologist. And, I had my first
“legal” beer in a saloon in the Mormon town of Lovell, Wyoming. But, I was also
worrying about my future at the university, I had not been studying for the
German language exam that I would have to pass to be admitted for my 4th
year at Brown University.
The Museum replaced
the Observatory for me. I spent many a happy weekend there working with the
artifact collections, although initially the job was simply to straighten up
some of the storage rooms that the Haffenreffer had used for their
collections. It was a really interesting experience. Behind the main display
along the furthest wall, was a “secret” door. The door led to an area behind
the displays and to another door which opened into two storage rooms. There, on
a row of wooden shelves, were stone axes, matates, large obsidian chipped
blades, mortars and pestles, etc. The records and numbering for the artifacts
were terrible, so I was unable to assemble them by their original sites. So my
job became to arrange them by type. This I did. In the center of the room was a
makeshift table made up of 5 gallon paint cans and long 2 by 4 boards. In order
to create floor space to do the sorting I took the table apart and discovered
that the paint cans were heavy. Inside the first can, I found more artifacts,
ground stone ax heads to be exact. So I decided to open the rest and get them
organized —– that’s when I went in to tell Dr. Giddings about my discovery.
The Haffenreffer
family was well established in Bristol. Before Prohibition, they brewed
Haffenreffer Beer and imported liquors from Europe. It seems that when
Prohibition was enacted their business changed. In the paint cans, I found
bottles of champagne, sherry, Scotch whisky, gin and chartreuse. Some of the
seals had dried out and the alcohol had evaporated. But, there was enough there
to throw a party. I informed Dr. Giddings of the find and several weeks later
he sponsored a party at his house, located on the Museum property, for us
anthropology majors, a small motley group of Brown undergrads.
During that first year
working at the Museum I also was encouraged to plan a display of Northeastern Indian
archaeology. This required researching the literature and finding
representative samples of artifacts from the various periods for display. On
Saturday mornings I would arrive, put on the coffee and start my research. Most
of the time Dr. Giddings was already there dictating his research notes or a
chapter for one of his site reports. These went into a Dictaphone for Marge,
his secretary, who would type them up during the week. At these times we would
have a chance to drink a cup of coffee and talk.
“We did have some real
good talks – about archaeology, his favorite field, anthro in general, and
books which he had read and loved – he and I share the same love for books, (I
even bought copies of some the same ones he owned and have them today),” (Ibid).
The Museum, even after
his passing and my return to Rhode Island, was a very special place filled with
memories. One memory that is especially strong and relevant to today’s
(8/12/2017) talks about North Korea and Nuclear weapons is what happened in
October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I spent the weekend down in
Bristol at the Museum. The US Navy had a blockade around Cuba to prevent
Russian transports from bringing in missiles to Cuba. The Russian cargo ships
were approaching the picket line and no one knew what would happen – maybe
WWIII. On the hill, known as Mt Hope, behind the Giddings’ house was a large
domed radar installation to detect incoming bombers. When it was still, you
could hear the antenna slowly turning under the dome. The radar commanded a
Nike anti-aircraft battery located down Rt. 136 to where today Roger Williams
University has some of its buildings and parking lots today, (for more
information on the Mount Hope Nike AA site, click here). Within a 250-mile radius of the Museum there were 2 Strategic
Air Command bases, the headquarters of the Atlantic Destroyer fleet, the Naval
War College, and the Groton Submarine base, to say nothing for Boston Navy
Yard. It was a target-rich place and it was a really scary weekend.
The Russian ships
turned back, tensions lessened; Robert Kennedy published “Thirteen Days:
A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis” in 1969, and since then a
movie and two TV movies have revived those tense days. But at the time it
seemed that the Museum was at the center of the universe, and for me it has
always held some great memories of Brown, anthropology, and especially the man
who lit a fire under me to pursue a career in anthropology.
