Dennis J. Stanford - Ice age hunters of the Rockies

Ice age hunters of the Rocky Mountains / Dennis Stanford and Jane Day, editors.

p. cm

Includes index.

ISBN 0-87081-221-1. ISBN 0-87081-246-7 (pbk.)

1. Paleo-IndiansRocky Mountains RegionCongresses. 2. Folsom

cultureRocky Mountains RegionCongresses. 3. Rocky Mountains

RegionAntiquitiesCongresses. 4. Wormington, H. M. (Hannah

Marie), 1914Congresses. I. Stanford, Dennis J. II. Day,

Jane Stevenson.

E78.R63I25 1992

978dc20

91-40686

CIP

Pioneer in Paleoindian archaeology, Marie Wormington has been and continues to be both nationally and internationally recognized as a leader in the field of Paleoindian, or early man, archaeology. Her field investigations in the New World and comparative studies have taken her over much of the western United States, Canada, and Mexico, and in the Old World to the Classic sites in southern France, Russia, and China. She is the author of several widely used texts and numerous research investigations.

After receiving her B.A. in 1935, Marie spent the summer in France, where her work in the French Paleolithic was launched by archaeologist Harper Pat Kelly, whom she met at the Muse de l'Homme in Paris. Through Kelly's network, Marie met and worked with other great French archaeologists such as D. Henri-Martin and D. Peyrony. Kelly's influence also led to her meeting with Edgar Howard, an American archaeologist already known for his work in Paleoindian archaeology. When Marie returned to denver, she was hired by the Denver Museum of Natural History as staff archaeologist at $50 per month to photograph Paleoindian artifacts. Thus, in 1935 Marie Wormington's long association with the Denver Museum began, to last until 1968. The museum provided a base for Marie to formulate and write her several highly regarded books and monographs and a platform from which to launch her numerous field investigations. Shortly after her arrival she began work on the first edition of what ultimately became her best-known work, a synthesis titled Ancient Man in North America, first published in 1939. In 1936 she began her field work with the excavation of a small Paleoindian site in eastern Colorado. In 1937 and 1938 she conducted investigations at rockshelters in the then virtually unknown Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains and followed them with excavations at a Fremont culture village site in Utah. The results of this pioneering work culminated in her definitive monograph on the Fremont culture in 1955.

In spite of her growing prominence in the archaeological profession, Marie realized that her further progress was limited without advanced degrees. With characteristic energy and determination, she decided to return to school in

midcareer, and in 1950 obtained a fellowship to attend graduate school at Radcliffe College. Marie thus became the second woman ever to be admitted to study in the Harvard Anthropology Department, and the first to specialize in anthropology for a Radcliffe Ph.D., which she received in 1954. Meanwhile in Denver, Marie had already developed another synthetic work,