Ephraim George Squier and the Development of American Anthropology is an intellectual biography of Ephraim Squier (1821-88) and his contributions to the development of the nascent disciplines of archaeology and anthropology. During his career, which spanned the years 1845-77, Squier consistently articulated the need for a more holistic and integrated approach to the study of humankind. Although Squier is best known today for the classic book he coauthored with Edwin H. Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, Terry A. Barnhart shows that Squier's fieldwork and interpretive...

Writing the history of American archaeology, especially concerning eighteenth- and nineteenth-century arguments, is not always as straightforward as it might seem. Archaeology's trajectory from an avocation to a semi-profession to a specialized profession, rather than being a linear progression, was an untidy organic process that emerged from the intellectual tradition of antiquarianism. It then closely allied itself with the natural sciences throughout the nineteenth century, especially with geology and the debate about the origins and identity of the indigenous mound-building cultures of...