L E G E N D S
O F
A R C H A E O L O G Y
The stern-wheeler Gopher of Philadelphia
The Alligator
U.S. FOREST SERVICE
RIVERBOAT
Archaeologist
Former businessman C. B. Moore plied the rivers of the Southeast to pioneer archaeology in the region.
F
By Tamara Stewart rom 1891 until 1920, Clarence Bloomfield Moore of Philadelphia excavated and wrote about most of the major mound sites in southeast North America, from Archaic sites dating to about 1000 B.C., to Mississippian sites dating between approximately A.D. 1000 and 1540, and everything in between.The first to systematically investigate and document prehistoric ceramic sites in the American Southeast, Moore excavated hundreds of mounds within the coastal estuaries and major river drainages of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, bringing Southeastern archaeology into the public and academic arena in a way no other researcher had ever done. Moore was born in 1852 to Bloomfield and Clara (Jessup) Moore, a wealthy Philadelphia family. He graduated
american archaeology
from Harvard University in 1873, and became president of the Jessup and Moore Paper Company following his father’s death in 1879—a position he held for the next 20 years. Before settling into this position, however, he used some of his sizable inheritance to embark on a six-year world tour, traveling to Europe, Central America, and Asia. In South America he crossed the Andes on foot and by horseback, and made his way down the Amazon on a raft. A lack of biographical information about Moore makes one wonder what motivated him, at the age of 39, to pursue archaeology. Perhaps it was the many winters spent in Florida making observations on the St. Johns shell middens that inspired him to embark on what would become his life’s work and make him one of the leading prehistoric Southeastern specialists of his day.
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