Paul Sidney Martin

Paul Sidney Martin (born November 22, 1898 in Chicago – died January 20, 1974 starting with the groundbreaking seven-season expedition to the Montezuma County, Colorado in 1930–1938. His research passed through three distinct stages: field archaeology of the Anasazi Pueblo cultures of Colorado in the 1930s, studies of the Mogollon culture in 1939–1955 and the New Archaeology studies in 1956–1972. Martin collected more than 585 thousand archaeological artifacts He trained over fifty professional archaeologists and published more than 200 academic and popular papers.

Biography

Martin was the fifth child of Ellsworth C. Martin and Adelaide May Martin (née Sackett). The most recent biographical article by Stephen Nash states his date of birth as November 22, 1898; the site of the Field Museum of Natural History as November 20, 1899. He began graduate studies at the Department of Sociology under Fay-Cooper Cole and became Cole's first Ph.D. student ). In the summer of 1925 Martin departed for his first practical field excavations sponsored by the Milwaukee Public Museum. Martin "spent a remarkable amount of time" in rearranging the exhibition and public outreach campaigns that preceded and accompanied the Century of Progress exhibition of 1933–1934 After Laufer's suicide in 1934 Martin became the acting curator of the department Martin chaired the department if from 1935 to 1964 and remained with the museum until 1972. Towards the end of his life, in 1972, Martin moved to Tucson, Arizona and for a short time worked at the University of Arizona. Paul Sidney Martin died in 1974 of heart failure and coronary artery disease. focusing his research on the complex relationship between different buildings and passageways.

Work in Lowry Pueblo commenced in the summer of 1930. Martin practiced novel Chicago excavation methode and mining technologies learned from Cole and Morley, recorded everything on film, but did not take care to reinforce the exposed walls. They collapsed during the winter. The summer of 1931 brought many celebrated finds: "sixty or seventy pieces of pottery, many sherds, bone tools, minor objects, and about one hundred excellent negatives..." "unlike anything in the area". In the end of his life Martin himself wrote that "Mostly, we dug out of curiosity, for fun, for specimens, and to write the historical details for these sites and for this time period ... I fear some of [the excavations] were the result of my callow youth: the desire to make a name for myself by aping Kidder ... [and] to obtain a goodly amount of loot for the Museum, for I was, at the time, very museum minded."

The Lowry campaign was concluded in 1937–1938 with the studies of the settling patterns (Martin himself did not use the term). The 1938 season seemed uninspiring until August when excavations at Basketmareks' Site brought a breakthrough. Martin himself sought a more promising field where he could leave a lasting "scholarly mark on the profession". He decided to move from pure field archaeology into "greener intellectual pastures" and concentrated on the Mogollon culture of Arizona and New Mexico, which was discovered by Emil Haury in 1936. Martin's own contribution to archaeology made before World War II has been overshadowed by his post-war research in Arizona. Most of his own pre-war works were published by the museum's own press, not peer-reviewed journals. His stated goals were to search for Abajo pottery, study the newly discovered Mogollon culture and the relationship between it and the Anasazi cultures. The first season was dedicated to discovering specific traits that could help draw the line between the Mogollons and other prehistoric people. According to Martin himself, the change was directly influenced by the work of Fred Eggan and George Murdock. Earlier known Mogollon sites were open to the elements; Tularosa Cave was buried under a thick layer of soil which preserved the organic remains of the Mogollon culture - maize cobs, shoes, baskets, netting and strings etc. These organic specimens preserved by Martin and Rinaldo enabled later researchers to perform DNA analysis and neutron activation analysis of the site excavated many decades ago. Studies of food habits brought Martin in tighter contact with biologists; his associate Hugh Cutter coined the term cultural ecology in 1956.

New Archaeology

In 1955 Martin became lecturer in anthropology at the University of Chicago and for the first time in his life began intensive work with students. He gradually stepped aside from field archaeology; his former authoritative management style became democratic and forgiving, and he even allowed women to archaeologists' camps.

In 1960 Martin obtained a National Science Foundation research grant that had, in retrospect, significantly changed the scope of archaeology at the Field Museum. He continued work at the university and still managed field expeditions, but practically quit writing. Only one of Martin's last ten excavations was adequately published; the paper was released posthumously by his students.

Footnotes