Why did Henry David Thoreau collect “Indian relics”? Some years ago I set out to answer this question for my own satisfaction. The results of my research were published late in 2019 (“Henry David Thoreau, Archaeologist? The Concord Saunterer 27: 42-67).
Unfortunately, the published version became available only as the covid lockdown took effect and I fear it went down Orwell’s Memory Hole. For whatever reason, it did not elicit any discussion on the issue.
The question remains open. Many disciplines like to claim Thoreau as “one of their own,” from abolitionists to zoologists. There is some justification for doing so. Thoreau’s intellect was wide ranging and in his short life his thinking contributed insights in many fields, from ecology to hydraulics to surveying. My question is whether he contributed to the emergence of prehistoric archaeology in the mid-nineteenth century. After all, Thoreau collected prehistoric artifacts and carefully studied the available literature on American Indian cultures. He was equally aware of the literature on geology and, at the end of his life, biological evolution, both of which required vast amounts of time. Did Thoreau put these different threads of thinking together and formulate a concept of “deep time” for human evolution?
I found no convincing evidence that he did so, at least in a way that would resonate with professional archaeologists in our time. Why not? After all, the significant breakthroughs in prehistoric archaeology in Europe and the United States were the work of the 1830s-1860s, the most active period of Thoreau’s interests in natural history and the sciences. If not, then why did he collect stone tools and pottery, his “Indian relics” as he called them?
