Hannah Marie Wormington

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Hannah Marie Wormington (born September 5, 1914 in Denver ; † May 31, 1994 ibid) was an American archaeologist who researched the southwestern Indian tribes and the paleo -Indians of the United States.

Life

Wormington was born in 1914 to Charles Watkin Wormington and Adrienne Roucolle. Wormington received a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of Denver in 1935 and then became the first woman to study archeology at Radcliffe College . Originally she wanted to continue the path she had started with anthropology, but after she had attended seminars by EB Renaud in France during the Paleolithic, she decided to study archeology. In 1960 she completed her master’s degree. In 1954 she received her PhD in anthropology from Harvard University .

In London, Wormington met the prehistorian Dorothy Garrod . This introduced Wormington to renowned archaeologists in Paris, including Harper Kelley and Henri Martin . Wormington soon worked under Kelley and was also allowed to borrow artifacts to catalog them for the Denver Museum. Martin took them on excavations in the Dordogne department . Upon her return to Denver, Wormington became a staff member of the Colorado Museum of Natural History (now the Denver Museum of Nature & Science ) in the archeology department, where she worked as a curator until it closed in 1968. It was here that the young archaeologist wrote her first two books: Ancient Man in North America and Prehistoric Indians of the South West . The first book was a first comprehensive treatise on the Pleistocene and Holocene in North America and has long been one of the standard works for students. Prehistoric Indians in the South West also became one of the standard works and was published several times.

In 1940 Wormington married geologist George D. Volk. During the Second World War, Wormington took a break and traveled the world with her husband until he had to go overseas for work and Wormington returned to the museum. Volk died in 1980.

In 1936, Wormington began cataloging the finds from the Lindenmeier Site for the Colorado Museum of Natural History. The site was one of the first Paleo-Indian archaeological sites. Wormington was able to compare the finds with those from Europe. She began doing research on the Montrose Rock Shelters and the Johnson Site. She also took part in excavations at the Fremont Village Site in Utah. Wormington was able to prove that the Fremont culture had its origin in the desert cultures of the Great Basin . In the 1950s, she was frequently present as a consultant for excavations.

After the closure of the anthropology department at the museum, Wormington became visiting professor at Arizona State University (1968/69), then at Colorado College (1969/70). From 1973 she taught as an associate professor at the University of Minnesota and until 1986 at Colorado College.

In 1968, Wormington was elected the first woman president of the Society for American Archeology . She had already become vice-president in 1950/51 and 1955/56. 1977 received the honorary doctorate from Colorado State University. In 1983 she became the first woman to receive an Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Society of American Archeology. Two years later she received the Colorado Archeology Society CT Hurst Award for her outstanding achievements in the field of archeology in Colorado. In 1988 she received another honorary doctorate from Colorado College and in the same year became curator emeritus of the Denver Museum of Natural History.

Wormington died of smoke inhalation in 1994. She fell asleep with a cigarette on the sofa and set it on fire.

Fonts (selection)

  • with Betty Holmes: The differentiation of Yuma Points . 1937
  • with Betty Holmes: A comparison of Folsom and Yuma Flaking Techniques . 1937
  • Ancient Man in North America . 1939
  • Prehistoric Indians of the Southwest . 1947
  • A proposed Revision of the Yuma Point Terminology (= Colorado Museum of Natural History Proceedings, Vol. 18, No. 2), 1948
  • A Reappraisal of the Freemont Culture, with a Summary of the Archeology of the Northern Periphery . Denver Museum of Natural History, Proceedings No. 1, 1955
  • with Robert Lister: Archaeological Investigations of the Uncomphgre Plateau . Denver Museum of Natural History, Proceedings No. 2, 1956
  • A Survey of Early American Prehistory . In: American Scientist . Vol. 50, No. 1, 1962, pp. 230-242
  • mir Richard Forbis: An Introduction to the Archeology of Alberta, Canada . Denver Museum of Natural History Proceedings No. 11, 1965
  • with Dorothy Ellis (Ed.): Pleistocene Studies in Southern Nevada . Nevada State Museum, Anthropological Papers No. 13, Carson City, 1967
  • Archeology of the Late and Post-Pliocene from a New World perspective . In: WW Howells, Patricia Jones Tsuchitani (Ed.) Paleoanthropology in the People's Republic of China . National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC 1977
  • Early Man in the New World: 1970-1980 . In: Richard Shutler, Jr. (Ed.) Early Man in the New World . Sage Publications, Berkeley 1983

literature

  • George Agogino: HM Wormington 1914-1994 . In: Plains Anthropologist Vol. 39, No. 150, 1994, pp. 475-476.
  • Stephen E. Nash: Hannah Marie Wormington: Woman, Myth, Legend . In: The Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History Vol. 78, 2013, pp. 247-277 ( doi : 10.1179 / 0023194013Z.0000000002 ).
  • Dennis Stanford: Obituary: Hannah Marie Wormington 1914–1994 . In: American Antiquity . Vol. 61, 1996, pp. 274-278.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Ute Gacs et al .: Women Archaeologist. A biographical dictionary . Greenwood Press Inc., Westport 1988, pp. 390-394 ( digitized from Google Books ).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Dennis Stanford: Obituary: Hannah Marie Wormington 1914-1994 . In: American Antiquity . Vol. 61, 1996, pp. 274-278.
  3. ↑ a b George Agogino: HM Wormington 1914-1994 . In: Plains Anthropologist Vol. 39, No. 150, 1994, pp. 475-476.
  4. ^ Stanford, Dennis (April 1996). "Obituary: Hannah Marie Wormington 1914-1994". American Antiquity 61 (2): 274-278
  5. ^ Hannah Marie Wormington, 79, Female Pioneer in Anthropology , New York Times, June 2, 1994
personal data
SURNAME Wormington, Hannah Marie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American anthropologist and archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Denver
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1994
Place of death Denver