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BENJAMIN IRVING ROUSE August 29, 1913âFebruary 4, 2006 BY WILLIAM F. KEEGAN H is friends and colleagues knew him as âBen.â As he explained it, âMy dad was Irving Rouse. Iâm Benâ (in Drew, 2006), yet in all of his publications he used the name Irving Rouse. Like Christopher Columbus he âdiscoveredâ the native peoples of the Caribbean, and through his work our understanding of these peoples has been enhanced greatly. Moreover, the results of his research usually were published in a timely manner, and the notes and detailed drawings form an important corpus of data that is as useful today as it was 50 years ago. Benâs book The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus (1992) has been hugely popular and widely read, and introduced the archaeology of this region to numerous people who otherwise might not be interested. BENâS FAMILY Ben was born in Rochester, New York, on August 29, 1913. His father, who also graduated from Yale, owned a nursery, and Ben grew up with an interest in plants. He began his career at Yale in 1930; he was 17 years old. His undergraduate work was in plant science, and he intended to go into forestry. As he describes it, he took the $500 his family gave him for school and put it in the bank. But this 307
308 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS was the year after the stock market collapse and the bank failed. Ben lost all his money. Faced with the need to fend for himself he took whatever job was available. At first this was mowing lawns and raking leaves on the Yale campus, but in time Cornelius Osgood developed a liking for Ben and put him to work cataloging anthropology collections in the Yale Peabody Museum. Osgoodâs confidence in Ben started him on his path in anthropology, a path that led to an extraordinary 70-year career. On June 24, 1939, Ben married Mary Mikami. Mary was herself an extraordinary person. She came from an aristo- cratic family in Japan, where her father was an accomplished naval officer. Her family moved to the United States in the early 1900s, and she was born in San Francisco in 1912. After moving to Alaska, she was involved in anthropology projects and studied at the University of Alaska, where she met Froelich Rainey, who convinced her to pursue a Ph.D. at Yale. There she met and married Ben. They had two sons, David and Peter. David became an urban landscape architect in Philadelphia, following in the family tradition. Peter was the chief of staff to Tom Daschle and currently is the chief of staff for Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate. Mary Mikami was Benâs lifelong companion, and at times collaborator, until her death at the age of 87 on August 7, 1999. Her passing was memorialized in the U.S. Senate (Congressional Record, 1999). BEN AND YALE Working 20 hours a week and studying full time through the lean years of the Great Depression, Ben completed his B.S. in plant science at Yaleâs Sheffield Scientific School in 1934. This was a very prestigious accomplishment. However, by his junior year Ben had decided that he did not want to be a forester. Plant science, in his opinion, was a âmature
V I N G R O U S E BENJAMIN IR 309 field of study,â and he became fascinated with the fledgling field of anthropology through his work on anthropological collections in the Yale Peabody Museum. At Osgoodâs urging he began to take graduate classes in anthropology. Ben completed his Ph.D. in 1938. It was later published by Yale University Publications in Anthropology in two parts. The first dealt with methods of analysis entitled Prehistory in Haiti: A Study in Method (1939); the second focused on the application of these methods and was called Culture of the Ft. LibertÃ© Region, Haiti (1941). After completing his Ph.D., Ben was hired by the Peabody Museum of Natural History as an assistant curator; he was promoted to associate curator in 1947 and research associate in 1954. He was instructor in anthropology from 1939 to1943, became an assistant profes- sor in 1943, associate professor in 1948, professor in 1954, and MacCurdy professor in 1970. During his years at Yale, he served in a number of administrative capacities, including director of graduate studies (1953-1957, 1969-1972), depart- ment chair (1957-1963), director of undergraduate studies (1967-1970), and chair of the interdisciplinary archaeology program beginning in 1970. Ben was the Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropol- ogy and curator of anthropology when he officially retired in 1984, but he never stopped working. A most admirable qual- ity was his dedication to getting his archaeological research into press. His investigations at the Hacienda Grande site were published in 1990, and despite the fact he completed the fieldwork in Antigua in 1973, he pushed on to publish the results of this work (1999). MAJOR CONTRIBUTION: TIME-SPACE SYSTEMATICS My main recollection of graduate school was that the professors had diverse conflicting points of view. As an undergraduate I had been led to believe that there was a right way of doing things and all I had to do was learn what
310 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS it was. It bothered me at the time, but when I look back I think it was very good for me. It forced me to develop my own viewpoint and to be open to other points of view. One of the major influences on my thinking was the linguistic method of analysis (Siegel, 1996, p. 672). This quote is the perfect summation of Benâs perspec- tive. He really believed that there was one right way to do things. Starting from a strong background in taxonomy and influenced by linguistics, he sought to develop a method of classification that could be applied universally. He believed that classification was knowledge: If you could identify cul- tures and place them in the appropriate boxes of time and space, you would produce a complete culture history. Ben never liked the messiness of anthropology. His contributions to classification are legion. He was a ma- jor player in the debates concerning archaeological taxonomy. He developed a unique scheme for classifying archaeological materials based on modal analysis. His approach was first published in 1939 in a publication that remains a classic work that is as relevant today as it was 70 years ago (Prehistory in Haiti: A Study in Method). Even though his scheme was never widely adopted, Willey and Sabloff (1974) in their book A History of American Archaeology recognized his contributions by placing him at the base of the tree from which modern American archaeology developed. Through the years Ben revised his time-space diagram for Caribbean cultures with the belief that every refinement moved us that much closer to understanding the past. It has formed the foundation for Caribbean culture history for over 50 years. Ben took a sabbatical in England in 1963-1964. He re- ceived a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and was hosted by the Institute of Archaeology at the University of London. He expressed gratitude to the Guggenheim Foundation for suggesting that he go to Europe to expand his horizons: âI am particularly grateful to the Guggenheim selection com-
V I N G R O U S E BENJAMIN IR 311 mittee for recognizing my parochialism and insisting that I go to Europe to correct itâ (1972, p. xvii). At the time, he was working on three books. The first, Introduction to Prehis- tory: A Systematic Approach (1972), dealt with the methods of prehistory. The other two were to deal with aspects of world prehistory. This book clearly illustrates Benâs interest in a âlinguistic approach.â It is essentially a lexicon and grammar for describing archaeological materials and their relationships with regard to the identification of âpeoples and culturesâ from an admittedly ânormativeâ perspective. Yet Ben never moved beyond his undergraduate belief that there was only one correct way to study the past. He commented, âAs I look back, Iâm impressed by the fact that archaeology in the 1960s had reached the same state of maturity in classification that biology had reached when I was an undergraduateâ (Siegel, 1996, p. 672). He goes on to say, âJust before the revolution in archaeology took place, archaeologists had very high prestige in the discipline of anthropology because we knew what we wanted to do. Then Binford and his generation destroyed all thatâ (Siegel, 1996, p. 677). Ben may have claimed to be âopen to other points of view,â but he really was not. He ruled the Caribbean with an iron fist for many years and if your grant proposal or peer-reviewed article did not fit with his approach (and he seems to have reviewed them all), they were not funded or published. We had a particularly nasty exchange in the late 1980s. American Anthropologist asked him to submit a paper on the origins of the TaÃnos. No one would review it. As a naÃ¯ve young assistant curator, I accepted the challenge and wrote a scathing review. The other reviewers must have done the same because the article was rejected. Ben was furious! When he learned that I had been a reviewer, he told me that the only reason I had a job doing Caribbean archaeology
312 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS was because I had âsnuck in through the Bahamas.â I know of a similar exchange during fieldwork in Antigua in 1974, during which he told his graduate student to just do the best job he could. When he found out that this student was ap- plying the theories and methods of the âNew Archaeology,â Rouse was outraged. I relate these stories not to chastise Ben. He was always a gracious host and gentleman when I visited him at Yale. But it is important to recognize that he had a very particular mindset, and that he spent his career trying to develop the one correct way of doing archaeology. He set himself an impossible task. ROUSE IN THE CARIBBEAN Professor Cornelius Osgood arrived at Yale in 1930. Following the lead of Franz Boas, Osgood was interested in developing a comprehensive and systematic program of regional study, and with private backing he initiated the Caribbean Anthropological Program (CAP) in 1933 with the assistance of Froelich Rainey. The program included social anthropology as well as archaeology, and Professor Sidney Mintz was an early participant. The program never had sub- stantial funding, but it encouraged interest in an area that previously had been neglected. It is not clear why the Caribbean was chosen. Rouse (Siegel, 1996, p. 682) suggests that Charlotte Gower, a fellow graduate student at the University of Chicago, in- fluenced Osgoodâs choice of area. Gower wrote her disser- tation on the West Indies and considered possible connec- tions between the Caribbean and Florida (Gower, 1927). It is perhaps for this reason that Florida originally was included in the CAP. In fact, Florida became something of a refuge for the Caribbean program. As Ben recounts, âAfter World War II it was difficult to get back into the West Indies. Transportation patterns hadnât been reestablished. I
V I N G R O U S E BENJAMIN IR 313 wanted to go into the field, so Osgood suggested that I work in Florida. At the same time John Goggin came to Yale as a graduate studentâ (Siegel, 1996, p. 682). But the interest in Florida soon waned; âafter realizing that there was really little relationship between Florida and the West Indies, we dropped Florida from the programâ (Siegel, 1996, p. 682). Private sponsorship provided Yale graduate student Fro- elich Rainey the opportunity to sail through the Bahamas in search of archaeological sites in 1933. Rainey failed to find anything of significance in the Bahamas (but see Keegan, 1992), and so he and his patron turned to Haiti. One of CAPâs first projects was an archaeological investigation of Haiti. As mentioned, Osgood took an immediate liking to the young and industrious Ben Rouse and put him to work cataloging anthropological collections in the Peabody Museum, and encouraged him to pursue graduate studies in anthropology. Ben was sent to Haiti with Rainey in 1934, and these investi- gations formed the basis for his dissertation (1938). Reading between the lines, there seems to have been some tension between Rouse and Rainey. In his memoir, Reflections of a Digger: Fifty years of Archaeology, Rainey (1992) devotes a chapter to his experiences in the Caribbean. He comments that all of the ideas he proposed for the islands had been overturned, but goes on to say that some people still think he was right. Of course it was Rouse who rejected Raineyâs ideas. Rainey (1992, p. 43) reminisces that years later when introducing Ben at a lecture: âMy clearest memory of him was sitting in a small Haitian jail with me, while the local police chief and his men dug out a large mound at Meillac in north Haiti, where they thought we were digging for pirate treasure. Perhaps that was a good beginning for a very serious and very academic sort of youngster.â Rainey left the Caribbean in 1935 to conduct research in Alaska, and Ben took over.
314 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS Ben next worked in Puerto Rico in 1936, 1937, and 1938 as part of the Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences. This was a landmark program combining investigations by numerous scientists investigating all aspects of the environ- ment and archaeology on the island. Rainey had conducted surveys and excavations in Puerto Rico in 1934 under the direction of the Peabody Museum. Ben followed up on Raineyâs (1940) work, and their differences in interpreta- tion are clear and evident. Whereas Rainey believed that the different cultural assemblages that he identified reflected different migrations, Ben believed that they were part of a single line of development. These differences contributed to Benâs lifelong focus on the meaning and identification of human migrations (1986). Ben objected to the general application of the European Conquest Model to explain all migrations, and he demonstrated that one model cannot possibly fit all cases (Drew, 2006). Between May and September 1941, Ben and Osgood con- ducted research in Cuba that was sponsored by the Institute of Andean Research. Osgood (1942) focused on the Archaic cultures (Ciboney), while Rouse investigated what would become known as the Ceramic age. He recalls, âSr. Orencio Miguel Alonsoâ¦took me to most of the sites I visited in the municipalities of Banes and Antilla. His automobile, âDrÃ¡cula,â proved in- dispensable in this work, for it could go all places where mine could not. My excavations were carried out by the Boy Scouts of the Banes troop under his directionâ (1942, p. 6). Ben studied Caribbean collections in European museums in 1939. The most significant of these, in his opinion, was J. A. Bullbrookâs collection from Trinidad, which was housed in the British Museum. Bullbrook had written a detailed ac- counting of his work and finds in 1919, but these had never been published. Rouse (1953) recognized the significance
V I N G R O U S E BENJAMIN IR 315 of this work because it provided a detailed accounting of stratigraphic relationships âsixteen years before Raineyâs pioneer stratigraphic research in Puerto Rico.â Ben spent 10 weeks in Trinidad in the summer of 1946, collaborating with Bullbrook, and editing his manuscript (Bullbrook, 1953). He did additional work on the island with John Goggin in 1953. Excavations at the sites of Cedros and Ortoire would become the type-sites for the Cedrosan Saladoid and Ortoiroid series of Caribbean peoples and cultures. These established an eastern South American origin for the Ceramic and Archaic ages, respectively. He returned to Trinidad with Fred Olsen in 1969 and collected samples for radiocarbon dating. Osgood and George Howard conducted preliminary sur- veys of Venezuela and Trinidad in 1941. They were followed a year later by JosÃ© MarÃa Cruxent, who recently had moved to Venezuela from Barcelona, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. Cruxent would spend the next 16 years investigating Venezuelan prehistory. Ben worked with Cruxent in 1946, 1950, 1955, and 1956-1957. Here, on the banks of the Ori- noco River, Ben found the evidence he needed to challenge Julian Stewardâs circum-Caribbean theory (see below). Beginning in the 1950s, a variety of the new investiga- tions were conducted by his students: Robert Howard in Jamaica (1950), Marshall McKusick in St. Lucia (1960), Paul Gene Hahn in Cuba (1961), and Louis Allaire in Martinique (1977). What is surprising is that only Allaire, of all of his students, continued to conduct research in the Caribbean after completing their dissertations. Ben used the results of his students and other investiga- tors to fill in the gaps in his chart. All of these excavations contributed to Benâs increasingly detailed diagrams of the âpeoples and culturesâ of the Caribbean. Beginning with the classification techniques first developed in his dissertation, he plotted the distributions of like materials in time and space
316 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS (with space on the x axis and time on the y axis). A major breakthrough came in the 1950s with the development of radiocarbon dating. Ben received a National Sciences Foun- dation grant in 1963 to obtain the first radiocarbon dates for the region. Minze Stuiver analyzed a total of 31 samples from Venezuela, Guadeloupe, and Puerto Rico at the Yale Geochronology Lab. More dates were obtained in succeed- ing years, and Ben was then able to refine the chronology for the region (1978). Benâs final major field project was conducted in the summer of 1973 on Antigua. Fred Olsen, who developed a method for safely packing high explosives and was head of explosives and ammunition research for the U.S. Army until 1929, had built a winter home on Antigua in 1954. Olsen was an avid amateur archaeologist and began excavating a site at Mill Reef. He invited Ben to Antigua to help them learn to excavate properly. Ben accepted the invitation and spent 10 days helping the âMill Reef Diggersâ in 1956. As Olsen (1974a, p. 26) recounts, Ben âimmediately captivated Mill Reef with his modesty, consideration, and patience.â Disappointed that the Mill Reef site was small and the artifacts relatively unspectacular, Olsen continued his ex- plorations of archaeological sites on the island. With the discovery of the Indian Creek site he believed that he finally had a spectacular site, and Ben was again invited to the island to conduct systematic excavations. It is my understanding that Ben did not want to do the project, and after an initial visit to the site in 1969, he held out for several more years. However, by this time Olsen had amassed a fabulous collec- tion of pre-Columbian artifacts and Yale was cultivating him for a major donation (George Kubler wrote the foreword to Olsenâs book [1974a]). Ben eventually relented and in May 1973 he and graduate student Dave D. Davis went to Antigua. Davis did the initial
V I N G R O U S E BENJAMIN IR 317 survey of Indian Creek and then directed the excavation of Archaic sites (Davis, 2000), while Rouse with local help ex- cavated Indian Creek (1999). During the excavation of the final trench (trench 7) in June, Ben suffered a heart attack and spent the next five weeks in the hospital (Olsen, 1974b). Despite his reluctance to participate in this project, the results from Indian Creek and Jolly Beach served to define the culture history of the northern Lesser Antilles. A second important outcome of this work was the encouragement he gave to Desmond Nicholson. Nicholson, a long-time resident of Antigua, had a more archaeological focus than did Ol- sen (who seems to have been more interested in artifacts). Desmond went on to found the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda, and was the driving force behind archaeological investigations on the island for decades. Although he never directed another research project, over the years Ben visited numerous ongoing excavations. Young researchers especially sought Benâs sage advice and wisdom. For example, Shaun Sullivan brought Ben to Middle Caicos (Turks & Caicos Islands) in 1977. Sullivan (1981) had discovered the first âball courtâ in the Bahama archipelago at site MC-6. Given this unique discovery, Sullivan sought Benâs opinion. Getting to MC-6 required following a treacherous 3.5-km-long trail. When Ben fell on the trail, Sullivan feared that he had killed him! We need also to consider something of an enigma. The International Association for Caribbean Archaeology, albeit known by different names at different times, has been the pri- mary forum for Caribbeanists for the past 45 years. Typically, the Congress meets every other year on a different Caribbean island. Ben attended what was then called the First Interna- tional Convention for the Study of pre-Columbian Culture in the Lesser Antilles held at Fort-de-France, Martinique, in July 1961. Father Robert Pinchon organized this convention,
318 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS and the debates were so contentious I have been told that distribution of the publication was suppressed. Proceedings of the business meeting for the second âcongressâ indicate that Pinchon had asked Ben, Ripley Bullen, and William Haag to serve as an advisory committee. The second con- gress was supposed to be organized by Thomas J. Maxwell in Puerto Rico in 1963, but Maxwell left Puerto Rico before the meeting came to fruition. Ripley Bullen picked up the slack and with Neville Connell, director of the Barbados Museum, the second congress was held in Barbados in 1967. Bullen was named the permanent chair, and he organized biennial meetings and published congress proceedings until his death in 1977. What is surprising is that Rouse, despite his status as a founder of Caribbean archaeology, did not support this orga- nization. He did not attend the second meeting in Barbados (in 1967), the third in Grenada (in 1969), the fourth in St. Lucia (in 1971), and although he published a paper in the proceedings of the fifth congress (in Antigua in 1973) he was not in attendance, probably due to his heart attack just prior to the congress. He did attend the sixth congress in Guadeloupe in 1975 but not the seventh or eighth. Despite this apparent lack of interest in the organization, he was recognized for his contributions to Caribbean archaeology, along with Jacques Petitjean Roget, at the 16th congress in Guadeloupe (in 1995). Why did the âfatherâ of Caribbean archaeology not participate on a more regular basis in meet- ings of Caribbean archaeologists? I do not know the answer, but I can offer speculations. At the first convention Father Pinchon, an amateur archaeolo- gist, was brutal in his questioning of Benâs interpretations. The permanent chair of subsequent congresses was Ripley Bullen, who did not have a Ph.D. and who developed a dif- ferent concept of ceramic âseries.â The congress also had a
V I N G R O U S E BENJAMIN IR 319 more amateur feel to it, especially in the early years. More- over, archaeologists from Hispanic countries, notably Mario Sanoja and Iraida Vargas in Venezuela and Marcio Veloz Maggiolo in the Dominican Republic were pursuing Marx- ist explanations for cultural developments in the Caribbean (modo de vida). French archaeologists were pursuing their own agenda. Clifford Evans and Betty Meggers continued to promote Julian Stewardâs notion of a Formative that derived from migrations out of Andean South America (circum-Ca- ribbean chiefdoms). As mentioned earlier, Rouse believed that there was one correct way to do archaeology. At Carib- bean congresses he would have had to confront a diversity of approaches and a chaotic view of archaeology. I suspect he believed that the effort was not worth his time. We also need to recognize Benâs contributions to Con- necticut archaeology. âI did local archaeology. Quite a bit of it. I was 16 years old when I became involved with the ASCâ (Drew, 2006). The Archaeological Society of Connecticut (ASC) was officially founded in 1934 with the goal of train- ing archaeologists to complete the archaeological survey of the state. Osgood was the first president. Ben was the first secretary-treasurer, then secretary, and he was editor of the ASC Bulletin. In the late 1950s it was decided that the Univer- sity of Connecticut at Storrs would handle local archaeology while Yale would focus on national and international projects. By this time Ben had already moved on, and was more focused on his interests in world archaeology. However, in 1984 he collaborated with Lucianne Lavin to rehabilitate the Peabody Museumâs aging exhibits on Native Americans with a special focus on the archaeology of Connecticut. DEFINING MOMENT: HANDBOOK OF SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS A defining moment in Benâs career was his participation in the Handbook of South American Indians in the mid 1940s.
320 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS He contributed chapters on the (Island) Arawak (now TaÃ- nos) and (Island) Carib. These chapters drew heavily on the accounts of European chroniclers, and served as the main source of information about these cultures for years (1948). Julian Steward edited this seven-volume compendium and introduced the concept of sociocultural levels of integration to organize the volumes. Steward classified South American Indians into Marginal Tribes, Tropical Forest Cultures, Circum-Caribbean Chiefdoms, and Andean States; a slight variation on the more general classification of cultures into bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. The Island Arawaks were grouped with the Circum-Caribbean Chiefdoms, which Stew- ard proposed were derived from the expansion of complex societies from the Andes along the Caribbean littoral and out into the islands. Rouse disagreed. He proposed instead that the native peoples of the Caribbean had originated in lowland South America along the banks of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers. After migrating downriver to the northeast- ern coast of Venezuela and the Guianas (Orinoco Delta) they then migrated into the Caribbean islands (1953). Ben believed that the Caribbean was colonized by four discrete migrations. These occurred during the Lithic, Archaic, Ceramic, and Historic Ages. After every migration the bor- ders were hermetically sealed such that new migrations were not accepted. Other archaeologists in the region viewed every new pottery series as reflecting a separate migration of peoples from South America. Rouse has remained adamant that there was a single Ceramic Age migration called Saladoid that was followed by the local development (in Puerto Rico) of a new series called Ostionoid. To emphasize this point he adopted the concept of subseries that was first proposed by Gary Vescelius, the territorial archaeologist for the U.S.
V I N G R O U S E BENJAMIN IR 321 Virgin Islands. Ben regrouped his earlier series into subseries leaving only the initial Saladoid and subsequent Ostionoid as full series. This modification eliminated the possibility of multiple migrations, and cut off discussions of outside, circum-Caribbean influences in the region. As he noted, âMy efforts have been largely devoted to trying to counteract the assumption that everything had to come in from the outsideâ (Siegel, 1996, p. 682). He did accept that there were outside influences, but he maintained a belief in the uniqueness of Caribbean cultures. FINAL THOUGHTS I first met Ben at the Second Bahamas Conference on Archaeology in 1978, but recall an interesting exchange during the Third Bahamas Conference held on San Salva- dor, Bahamas, in 1982. John Winter presented a paper on a study using neutron activation to characterize pottery from Cuba and the Bahamas. He concluded that similarities in their signatures indicated that Bahamian pottery (Palmetto ware) must have developed from a Cuban tradition. In the discussion that followed I argued that without any dates it was impossible to identify a Cuban source for Bahamian pot- tery (i.e., when did the spread of pottery from Cuba occur?). During the break, Ben came up to me and said, âYou donât think much of pottery analysis, do you?â How could I, a new M.A., respond to this great figure in Caribbean archaeology who at that time had spent almost 50 years studying pottery in the Caribbean? I said, âIt is not the study of pottery I object to, it is the use of incomplete evidence to justify this particular conclusion.â Over the years I and many others visited Benâs lab at Yale on numerous occasions. He was always a gracious host, and incredibly generous with his time and resources. He had the most incredible collection of articles and papers on Carib-
322 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS bean archaeology, and an encyclopedic knowledge of who wrote what and when. When I last saw him I was studying Ostionan pottery, and he offered me his cards describing modes for this subseries in Puerto Rico (in the days before computers Ben would list different modes for a style or series on separate 3Ã5 cards). Foolishly I did not accept his offer, but hopefully the cards are still on file at Yale. Ben Rouse is rightfully recognized as the doyen of Carib- bean archaeology. But it would be wrong to view him simply as a Caribbeanist. His contributions and influence extend far beyond this region. He was a pioneer in what later would be called the Classificatory-Historical Period in American archaeology. His contributions to classification as a tool in archaeology are recognized widely. Furthermore, he had a great interest in world archaeology, a subject he taught at Yale beginning in the 1960s. Ben distinguished between ar- chaeologists (methodological technicians) and prehistorians (those who wrote the past). He was always a prehistorian, and took a broad and synthetic view of the peoples and cultures that lived in the past. He has left a lasting imprint on the Caribbean region in particular and American archaeology in general. CHRONOLOGY 1913 Born August 29 in Rochester, New York 1930-1934 Attended Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University as an undergraduate 1934-38 Attended graduate school, Yale University 1934-1938 Secretary-treasurer, Archaeological Society of Connecticut 1935 Fieldwork in Haiti 1936-1938 Fieldwork in Puerto Rico 1938-1950 Editor, Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Connecticut 1939 June 24, married Mary Mikami 1939 Carnegie Foundation grant to study in European museums
V I N G R O U S E BENJAMIN IR 323 1941 Fieldwork in Cuba 1944 Fieldwork in Florida 1944-1947 Coeditor, Yale University Publications in Anthropology 1946-1950 President, Eastern States Archaeological Federation 1946-1950 Editor, American Antiquity 1946-1957 Fieldwork in Venezuela 1946, 1953 Fieldwork in Trinidad 1948-1960 Member, Executive Board, Florida Anthropological Society 1950-1953 Member, Executive Board, American Anthropological Association 1952-1953 President, Society for American Archaeology 1950-1963 Editor, Yale University Publications in Anthropology 1957-1958 Vice president, American Ethnological Society 1958-1961 Delegate of the American Anthropological Association, National Research Council 1960-1962 Associate editor, American Anthropologist 1963-1964 Guggenheim fellow, Institute of Archaeology,University of London 1967-1968 President, American Anthropological Association 1968-1969 Acting editor, Yale University Publications in Anthropology 1973 Fieldwork in Antigua 1973-1985 Assistant editor for Caribbean archaeology, Handbook of Latin American Studies, U.S. Library of Congress 1977 Oppenheimer visiting associate, University of CapeTown 1977-1979 President, Association for Field Archaeology 1984 Retired from Yale University 2006 Died February 4 in New Haven, Connecticut
324 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS AWARDS AND HONORS 1948 A. Cressy Morrison Prize for the monograph Porto Rican Prehistory 1951 Elected to the New York Academy of Sciences 1954 Medalla Commemorativa del Vuelo Panamericano pro Faro a ColÃ³n, awarded by the Cuban government 1960 Viking Fund Medal and Award in Anthropology 1962 Elected to the National Academy of Sciences 1963-1964 Guggenheim fellow 1984 Distinguished Service Award, American Anthropological Association 1985 Fiftieth Anniversary Award, Society for American Archaeology 1995 Distinguished Service Award, International Association for Caribbean Archaeology PROFESSIONAL RECORD 1934 B.S., Yale University 1938 Ph.D., Yale University 1938 Named assistant curator of anthropology, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University 1939 Named instructor in the Department of Anthropology, Yale University 1943 Promoted to assistant professor, Department of Anthropology, Yale University 1947 Promoted to associate curator, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University 1948 Promoted to associate professor, Department of Anthropology, Yale University 1954 Promoted to full professor, Department of Anthropology, Yale University 1954 Named research associate, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University 1957-63 Chair, Department of Anthropology, Yale University 1970 Named Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Yale University 1975 Named research affiliate, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University 1977 Named curator of anthropology, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University
V I N G R O U S E BENJAMIN IR 325 1984 Named Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, Yale University 1984 Named Curator Emeritus, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University MEMBERSHIPS American Academy of Arts and Sciences American Anthropological Association American Council of Learned Societies American Ethnological Society Archaeological Society of Connecticut Association for Field Archaeology Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering Eastern States Archaeological Federation Florida Anthropological Society Gesell Institute of Child Development Society for American Archaeology Society of Professional Archaeologists REFERENCES Allaire, L. 1977. Later Prehistory in Martinique and the Island Carib: Problems in Ethnic Identity. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University. Uni- versity Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Mich. Bullbrook, J. A. 1953. On the Excavation of a Shell Mound at Palo Seco, Trinidad, B.W.I. New Haven: Yale University Publications in An- thropology No. 50. Congressional Record. SenateâOctober 1, 1999. In memoriumâMary Mikami Rouse, pp. S11791-S11792. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govern- ment Printing Office. Davis, D. D. 2000. Jolly Beach and the Preceramic Occupation of Antigua, West Indies. New Haven: Yale University Publications in Anthropol- ogy No. 84. Drew, R. 2006. The influence of Irving Benjamin Rouse [sic]: A con- versation. Kacike Feb. 20. Available at www.kacike.org/Rouse.html. Gower, C. D. 1927. The Northern and Southern Affiliations of Antillean Culture. Memoirs of the American Anthorpological Association 35. Menasha, WI: American Anthropological Association.
326 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS Hahn, P. G. 1961. A Relative Chronology of the Cuban Nonceramic Tra- dition. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Mich. Howard, R. R. 1950. The Archaeology of Jamaica and Its Position in Rela- tion to Circum-Caribbean Culture. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Mich. Keegan, W. F. 1992. The People Who Discovered Columbus. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. McKusick, M. B. 1960. The Distribution of Ceramic Styles in the Lesser Antilles, West Indies. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Mich. Olsen, F. 1974a. On the Trail of the Arawaks. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Olsen, F. 1974b. Indian Creek: Arawak Site on Antigua, West Indies. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Osgood, Cornelius. 1942. The Ciboney Culture of Cayo Redondo, Cuba. Yale University Publications in Anthropology No. 25. New Haven: Yale University Press. Rainey, F. G. 1940. Porto Rican archaeology. In Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands. New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 18, part 1. Rainey, F. G. 1992. Reflections of a Digger: Fifty Years of Archaeology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Rouse, B. I. 1938. Contributions to the Prehistory of the Ft. LibertÃ© Region of Haiti. Ph.D. dissertation. Yale University. Siegel, P. E. 1996. An interview with Irving Rouse. Curr. Anthropol. 37:671-689. [Note: Peter Siegel, who is now an associate professor at Montclair State University, conducted a remarkable and very comprehensive interview with Ben. It provides a detailed account- ing of Benâs career in his own words.] Sullivan, S. D. 1981. Prehistoric Patterns of Exploitation and Colonization in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Willey, G., and J. Sabloff. 1974. A History of American Archaeology. San Francisco: Freeman and Sons.
V I N G R O U S E BENJAMIN IR 327 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 1939 Prehistory in Haiti: A Study in Method. Publications in Anthropology No. 21. New Haven: Yale University. 1941 Culture of the Ft. LibertÃ© Region, Haiti. Publications in Anthropology Nos. 23 and 24. New Haven: Yale University. 1942 Archaeology of the Mariabon Hills, Cuba. Yale University Publications in Anthropology No. 26. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1948 The West Indies: An introduction to the Ciboney. In Handbook of South American Indians. The Circum-Caribbean Tribes, vol. 4, ed. J. H. Steward, pp. 497-503. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 143. The Arawak. In Handbook of South American Indians. The Circum-Ca- ribbean Tribes, vol. 4, ed. J. H. Steward, pp. 507-546. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 143. The Carib. In Handbook of South American Indians. The Circum-Caribbean Tribes, vol. 4, ed. J. H. Steward, pp. 547-565. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 143. 1949 Petroglyphs. In Handbook of South American Indians. The Circum-Ca- ribbean Tribes, vol. 5, ed. J. H. Steward, pp. 493-502. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 143. 1951 Areas and periods of culture in the Greater Antilles. Southwest. J. Anthropol. 7(3):248-265. Prehistoric Caribbean culture contact as seen from Venezuela. Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 13(8):342-347.
328 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 1952 Porto Rican prehistory. Introduction: Excavations in the west and north. In Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands. New York Academy of Sciences 18(4):307-460. Porto Rican Prehistory: Excavations in the interior, south, and east: Chronological implications. Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands. New York Academy of Sciences 18(4):463-578. 1953 The circum-Caribbean theory: An archaeological test. Am. Anthropol. 55(2):188-200. 1956 Settlement patterns in the Caribbean area. In Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the New World, Viking Fund Publications in Anthropol- ogy, vol. 23, ed. G. Willey, pp. 165-172. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. 1958 Archaeological similarities between the southeast and the West In- dies. In Florida Anthropology, Publication No. 2, ed. C. Fairbanks, pp. 3-14. Tallahassee: Florida Anthropological Society. 1960 The Entry of Man into the West Indies. Yale University Publications in Anthropology No. 61. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1961 Archaeology in lowland South America and the Caribbean, 1935-1960. Am. Antiquity 27(1):56-62. The Bailey collection of stone artifacts from Puerto Rico. In Essays in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology, ed. S. K. Lothrop, pp. 342-355. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
V I N G R O U S E BENJAMIN IR 329 1962 The intermediate area, Amazonia, and the Caribbean area. In Courses Toward Urban Life: Archaeological Considerations of Some Cultural Alternatives, eds. R. J. Braidwood and G. R. Willey, pp. 34-59. Publications in Anthropology No. 32. New York: Viking Fund. 1964 Prehistory of the West Indies. Science 144:499-513. The Caribbean area. In Prehistoric Man in the New World, eds. J. D. Jennings and E. Norbeck, pp. 389-417. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1966 Mesoamerica and the eastern Caribbean area. In Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 4, eds. G. E. Ekholm and G. R. Willey, pp. 234-242. Austin: University of Texas Press. Caribbean ceramics: A study in method and theory. In Ceramics and Man, Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, vol. 41, ed. F. R. Matson, pp. 88-103. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. 1969 With J. Cruxent. Early man in the West Indies. Sci. Am. 221(5):42- 52. 1972 Introduction to Prehistory: A Systematic Approach. New York: McGraw- Hill. 1977 Patterns and process in West Indian archaeology. World Archaeol. 9(1):1-11. 1978 With L. Allaire. Caribbean. In Chronologies in New World Archaeology, eds. R. E. Taylor and C. Meighan, pp. 431-481. New York: Aca- demic Press.
330 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 1980 The concept of series in Bahamian archaeology. Fla. Anthropol. 33(3):94-98. 1982 Ceramic and religious development in the Greater Antilles. J. New World Archaeol. 5(2):45-55. 1985 With C. Moore. Cultural sequence in southwestern Haiti. Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress for Caribbean Archaeology, eds.: Louis Allare and Francine-M. Meyer, pp. 3-21. MontrÃ©al: Univer- sitÃ© de MontrÃ©al. 1986 Migrations in Prehistory: Inferring Population Movements from Cultural Remains. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1989 Peopling and repeopling of the West Indies. In Biogeography of the West Indies, Past, Present and Future, ed. C. Woods, pp. 119-135. Gainesville, Fla.: Sandhill Crane Press. Peoples and cultures of the Saladoid frontier in the Greater Antil- les. In Early Ceramic Population Lifeways and Adaptive Strategies in the Caribbean. BAR International Series No. 506, ed. P. E. Siegel, pp. 383-404. Oxford: BAR. 1990 With R. E. AlegrÃa. 1990 Excavations at Maria de la Cruz Cave and Ha- cienda Grande Village Site, Loiza, Puerto Rico. Yale University Publica- tions in Anthropology No. 80. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1992 The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus. New Haven: Yale University Press.
V I N G R O U S E BENJAMIN IR 331 1996 History of archaeology in the Caribbean area. In The History of Archaeology: An Encyclopedia, ed. T. Murray. New York: Garland Publishing. 1999 With B. Faber Morse. Excavations at the Indian Creek Site, Antigua, West Indies. Yale University Publications in Anthropology No. 82. New Haven: Yale University Press.