Excavating Nauvoo: The Mormons and the Rise of Historical Archaeology in America

Introduction

Introduction On the afternoon of January 5, 1967, J. C. Harrington, “the father of historical archaeology,” and twelve other leading scholars in the field gathered in the North Park Inn Motel near the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. The men had come to Dallas to participate in the International Conference on Historic Archaeology being held at smu that weekend. The purpose of this exclusive meeting of the Special Committee the day before, however, was to discuss the creation of a professional scholarly society devoted to historical archaeology (the archaeology of the modern world, ad 1400 to the present). Among other things, the participants discussed the need for and purpose of such a society and debated what it should be called. Their deliberations extended into the early hours of the following morning. When the proposal to create the society was presented to the more than 100 conference attendees later that day, the measure was unanimously approved. 2 introduction Subsequently, officers were elected and details concerning the society’s purpose, meetings, publications, and membership were worked out. By the end of the two-day conference the Special Committee had achieved its purpose, and a milestone in the professional development of the field had been reached. The Society for Historical Archaeology (sha) was officially organized.1 The year before this historic conference at which the sha was founded, J. C. Harrington had retired from the National Park Service after nearly thirty years of service, during which he pioneered the field of historical archaeology. Indeed, it was precisely because of his experience and status in the field that Harrington was invited to be a member of the Special Committee that organized the sha, and why he was elected to the society’s original board of directors. Although retired, Harrington was by no means inactive. In fact, at the time thesha was created, he and his wife, Virginia, were deeply involved in the archaeology program of Nauvoo Restoration, Inc. (nri), a nonprofit corporation sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to authentically restore the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, as it was during the Mormon period of the 1840s. For four years (1966–69) they spent their summers in Nauvoo, excavating no fewer than five historic sites, including the massive excavation of the Mormon Temple. It was undoubtedly Harrington’s association with the restoration of Nauvoo at this time that resulted in nri becoming one of the original institutional members of the newly created sha in 1967.2 In fact, upon his return from the conference in Dallas he eagerly wrote to his colleagues in nri telling them about 3 introduction the society he had helped organize and about his election to its board. At the end of a long career excavating historic sites, Harrington clearly understood the historical significance of the event. “You will be interested in the meeting at Dallas,” he wrote. “Some 120 professional people (mostly archaeologists ) gathered there, primarily for the purpose of organizing a new association dealing with historical archaeology. This shows how the interest and active participation in this field has grown, as ten years ago I doubt if we could have garnered a dozen people.”3 The connections between the sha and the restoration of Nauvoo do not stop there. Fifteen years after it was founded, the sha, boasting a membership of almost 2,000, created a medal to recognize “scholars who have made outstanding contributions to the field.” Not surprisingly, the award was named in honor of Harrington, acknowledging his significant and lasting contributions as the “founding father” of historical archaeology. Appropriately, the first J. C. Harrington Medal was awarded to Harrington himself at the 1982 meetings of the sha. Medals have been awarded to qualified recipients at the annual meeting of the society ever since. Significantly, those who designed the award incorporated elements of Harrington ’s work into the medal itself. In particular, on the back of the medal are stylized depictions of three archaeological sites that represent “both the discipline as a whole and Harrington ’s individual career.” The site chosen to represent the nineteenth-century settlement of the Midwest and the subsequent opening of the Far West was that of the Nauvoo Temple. In this way, the medal symbolically represents and permanently 4 preserves not only the relationship between Harrington and nri but also the association between the field of historical archaeology and the restoration of...