No. 2 – October 1990

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VOLUME 51. NUMBER 2 83
KEEPING THE FAITH IN THE WEST: 130 YEARS OF ARCHAEOLOGY IN SPRINGFIELD
John P. Pretola
Good afternoon. I bring greetings from the Springfield Science Museum on this
celebration of the MAS's 50th Anniversary. The Springfield Science Museum has supported
MAS activities from the beginning. William S. Fowler worked on several projects at the
museum in the 1940's. Leo D. Otis, Cataloger and later Director, served as an MAS
vicepresident in the early 50's. Under William R. Young, a number of archaeological
activities were carried out in the 1960's culminating in his great work, the Connecticut Valley
Indian, a publication of the museum which stands as an important culture historical
introduction to the valley's archaeology.
Despite budget constraints in the 70's and 80's, the museum has continued to support
Massachusetts archaeology and has seen its collections grow through donation and excavation.
Educational and exhibition activities have also been active. Several temporary exhibits
including "Mother Earth, Father Sky" and "The Springfield Fort Hill Site" have been popular.
A revamped Native American Hall design has proceeded despite problems of logistics and
funding. It is anticipated that the Science Museum's new Native American Hall will be
installed in the late 1990's drawing upon the museum's extensive collections.
The great diversity of those archaeological collections became apparent as I began
inventorying them in the mid-1970's. Located in the south-central Connecticut Valley, the
Science Museum was founded as a natural history museum in 1859. Most of its archaeological
collections date to the 19th and early 20th century with some important exceptions - the
recently acquired Charles W. HUll, Walter S. Rodimon, Barker Day Keith and Joseph Craig
collections. As a rule, the older collections are from sites destroyed by urbanization. Such
old collections are rich in whole artifacts not simply because of collector's bias, but also
because farming technology was not so destructive to artifacts then.
There is a great deal of untapped information yet available in these collections. I
find the key to understanding this local museum collection lies in archaeological thought as
enumerated in newspapers, notes and books of the day combined with the more informative
orientation suggested by Meltzer (1985) who states that archaeology at this time was
essentially pre-university with emphasis on the holistic study of the American Indian. While
some of the local collectors were sophisticated enough to be considered archaeologists in their
own right (Young 1969), the majority should probably be considered antiquarians (persons
who revere something because it is old).
Such an antiquarian was Philip Kilroy, a local medical doctor. In 1902, Kilroy
donated his collection including 1250 local chipped stone and ground stone tools to the Science
Museum. The museum hastened to add Kilroy's collection to an exhibit that it was preparing
with the help of Harvard University Professor, Albertus L. Dakin. The exhibit was concern.ed
with tracing the history of technology, a natural history approach.
Copyright 1990 Iohn P. Pretol.