Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology

The Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology is a Native American archaeological collection in the United States. Founded in 1901 through a bequest from Robert Singleton Peabody, an 1857 Phillips Academy alumnus, the museum initially held the archaeological materials collected by Peabody from Native American cultures. Peabody's passionate interest in archaeology led him to create the museum at Phillips Academy to encourage young people's interest in the sciences, and to foster respect and appreciation for the Native American peoples who have inhabited that hemisphere for thousands of years.

The Peabody's major collections include artifacts and material from the Southwest, Northeast, Midwest, Mexico, Southeast and the Arctic. The date range represented by these collections spans from Paleo Indian (10,000+ years ago) to the present day.

The Robert S. Peabody Museum has served as a major center for fieldwork, research, and publication since its founding in 1901. Peabody, an 1857 graduate of Phillips Academy, established the Museum as the repository for his collection of approximately 38,000 artifacts and as a place where students could become acquainted with the discipline of archaeology.

As the museum’s first director, his son Charles initiated the strong emphasis on research with excavations in 1901 at the Dorr Mound, Mississippi, Jacob's Cavern, Missouri in 1903 and Bushy Cavern, Maryland in 1904, among others. His excavations used an early form of grid system and produced some of the first well-documented evidence of man in association with extinct fauna. His 1904 report on Jacob’s Cavern inaugurated the museum’s long history of research and publication.

Warren K. Moorehead, appointed curator in 1901 and second director in 1924, conducted fieldwork throughout North America. He undertook extensive regional surveys and excavations in the Arkansas River Valley, Northwest Georgia and coastal Maine from 1907 to 1938. Work at Etowah, Hopewell, the Cahokia Mounds, and “Red Paint” sites in Maine added about 200,000 objects and provided some of the most valuable early collections. Moorehead was appointed by Theodore Roosevelt to the Board of Indian Commissioners in 1909. He investigated claims of fraud at the Annishinabe Reservation at White Earth Minnesota, exposing illegal seizure of reservation land by lumber and land companies. The museum curates photographs documenting the work and gifts from Annishinabe people whose land was eventually returned.

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