Memories of J.L. Giddings and my introduction to Anthropology

 

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 21^st 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 4^th 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.