Archives Record
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Metadata
Catalog Number |
01.02 |
Title |
Warren K. Moorehead records |
Date |
circa 1800-1938 (bulk 1900-1938) |
Collection size |
10 linear feet (6 record cartons, 3 flat boxes) |
Creator |
Moorehead, Warren King, 1866-1939 |
Administrative/Biographical History |
Warren King Moorehead (1866-1939) grew up in Ohio, where he cultivated a lifelong interest in archaeology and American Indians. He attended Denison University but did not complete his undergraduate studies. In his early career, he worked as a correspondent for The Illustrated American and served as the first curator of the Ohio Archaeological Society. In 1896, he began what would become a personal friendship with Robert S. Peabody, providing the latter with several American Indian artifact collections. Moorehead was subsequently chosen by Peabody to be the first curator of the Phillips Academy Department of Archaeology (Robert S. Peabody Foundation for Archaeology; Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology) in 1901, and served in that capacity until 1924, when he assumed directorship of the department. He retired in 1938, a year before his death. Throughout his career Moorehead was a prolific excavator and writer. His large-scale archaeological surveys and excavations included the Arkansas River Valley, northwest Georgia, and coastal and interior Maine. Artifacts from these activities expanded the Department of Archaeology's collection by nearly 200,000 objects. Some of his publications were the result of these expeditions; others highlighted the artifact collections of a widespread network of collectors and antiquarians, and still others focused on the injustices of the contemporary situation of American Indians. Moorehead also served on the federal Board of Indian Commissioners, 1908-1933, and gave talks accompanied by lantern slides on both the prehistory and more recent history of American Indians to the general public. |
Scope & Content |
Moorehead's records were produced during the course of his work as Curator, 1901-1924, and Director, 1924-1938, of the Phillips Academy Department of Archaeology, as well as through the course of his public lecturing and publication projects. They consist of correspondence, administrative files from his survey projects, materials used in preparation for his publications, organizational records and correspondence of a Phillips Academy social club lecture series, and vouchers and invoices for accounting purposes. The records have been arranged into the following series: Series I. Correspondence; Series II. Survey projects; Series III. Publications; Survey IV. Smoke Talks; Series V. Theodore Vail account records. The correspondence relates to the Department of Archaeology's administration, the acquisition of artifact collections, responses to general public inquiries, communications with peer institutions and scholars and Moorehead's "illustrated lectures" series. The survey project series contains materials relating to the following projects: Arkansas, Texas, and New Mexico; Cahokia Mounds (Illinois); Fort Ancient (Ohio); Maine; Mandan (North Dakota); the Merrimack River Valley (Massachusetts and New Hampshire); the Southern United States (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and Washington, D.C.) and the Susquehanna River (New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland). The survey project files are mainly administrative but a few contain field records such as site drawings and photographs. The publication material includes photographs of objects sent in by artifact collectors that Moorehead drew upon for the two-volume The Stone Age in North America (1910), a notebook containing handwritten index notes for The Archaeology of Maine (1922) and manuscript mockups, mounted photographs, publication figures and printing plates for Exploration of the Etowah Site in Georgia: The Etowah Papers (1932). The organizational records and correspondence of the Phillips Academy "Smoke Talks" lecture series contain membership lists, event invitations and correspondence about possible lecturers and lecture topics. The Theodore Vail account records mostly consist of vouchers and expense lists documenting the use of private funds that Moorehead received from Vail. They provide information on the projects Moorehead was carrying out, as well as on the acquisition of American Indian artifact collections in the early 20th century. |
Conditions Governing Access |
This collection is open for research. |
Language of Material |
English, French |
Finding Aid |
Finding Aid |