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Making a Science of Archaeology Cyrus Thomas advanced archaeology by employing scientific methods. By Jon Muller
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
C
yrus Thomas was one of the first persons to be paid to do archaeology on a full-time basis, and he was also a purveyor of a new and professional archaeology.Though he had a great impact on the science, he came to archaeology rather late in his career and in a roundabout fashion. Thomas was born in 1825 and raised in East Tennessee. He moved to Murphysboro, Illinois, in 1849, staying at a hotel called the Logan House, which was run by the nationally known Logan family. While he was clerking and beginning a law practice, he married the innkeeper’s daughter, the sister of U. S. Congressman John A. Logan. While working as a lawyer,Thomas became interested in a broad range of natural phenomena. He was associated with John Wesley Powell, the geologist and ethnologist of Grand Canyon fame, as well as numerous members of various state natural history organizations, and was a founder of the Illinois Natural History Society. He became the curator and commissioner for entomology and ichthyology for that organization. He gained respect for his work as a
american archaeology
Cyrus Thomas
natural scientist, and his interests ranged from plant lice to Maya writing. He received an honorary Ph.D. from Gettysburg College that was most likely awarded for his work in entomology. Thomas’s first wife died during the Civil War, and he then went to Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary to
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