Frederic Ward Putnam

Frederic Ward Putnam (1839 to 1915) was an American anthropologist and biologist, widely known as the Father of American Archaeology. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, he studied under Louis Agassiz at Harvard but broke with him over evolution, worked first as a naturalist and in 1864 became the first director of the Peabody Museum of Salem. From 1874 to 1909 he was curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard, where he trained many students, including women and Native Americans, and directed excavations across 37 American states and abroad. He led an archaeological survey of Ohio from 1880 to 1895 and helped preserve the Great Serpent Mound, and in 1891 he became head of anthropology for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, whose collections led to the Field Museum. He was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1898, of the American Folklore Society in 1901 and of the American Anthropological Association in 1905.