|
Edward Palmer (1829–1911) was a self-taught British botanist and early American archaeologist. ==Biography== Born on 12 January 1829 and baptised on 22 February 1829 at Brandon, Suffolk, England, the son of Robert and Mary Palmer,〔Brandon, Suffolk: Register of Baptisms〕 he emigrated to the United States in 1850〔Passport Application, January 1902〕 where he initially settled in Cleveland, Ohio.〔US Census for Ohio 1850〕 He travelled to South America and became a medical doctor, serving with the Union Army during the American Civil War.〔McVaugh, Rogers. 1956. ''Edward Palmer: Plant Explorer of the American West''. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.〕 Palmer collected natural specimens, primarily plants, for the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, among other institutions. According to his biographer, “The collections made by Edward Palmer between 1853 and 1910 were prepared with more care than those of most of his contemporaries. He was primarily a botanical collector, and his botanical specimens were exceptionally well documented for his time.... () he was unwilling to attend to the documentation and distribution of his own collections, and preferred to entrust them for naming, sorting and selling, to his friends and patrons—prominent scientists all.” 〔McVaugh 1956:vii.〕 He collected specimens in the southwestern United States, Florida, Mexico (including Baja California), and South America and had about 200 species and two genera (''Palmerella'' and ''Malperia'') of plants named after him. The standard botanical author abbreviation Palmer is applied to species he described. He wrote a report (''Food Products of the North American Indians'' ) (1871), which was one of the pioneering works in ethnobotany. He collected specimens of 24 of the 61 plant species described, with their uses, in the report. Though primarily a botanist, Edward Palmer also contributed to early American archaeology and ethnology. Between 1882 and 1884, Palmer worked as a field assistant for the Bureau of American Ethnology Mound Exploration Division. The purpose of this expedition was to conduct an extensive survey of Indian mounds in the eastern United States. While most of Palmer’s archaeological research was performed in Arkansas, he also excavated mounds in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia.〔 〕 While in Georgia, Palmer investigated the Kolomoki Mound site in Early County. Though he excavated many of the mounds at Kolomoki, he is said to have discovered nothing worth cataloguing. He did, however, examine many “house sites” and found a number of ash deposits and fragments of pottery. In 1894, the Mound Exploration Division final report, written by its director Cyrus Thomas, was published and dispelled the racist theories that the mounds of the southeastern United States had been built by a “lost race of Mound-Builders.” The report cited ample evidence that the mounds were built by the ancestors of historical Native tribes. He did significant amounts of archaeological collecting and excavation the American West and in Mexico as well, in Utah, Nevada, and Texas in the U.S. and in Baja California, Coahuila, Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosí, and central Mexico. 〔McVaugh 1956〕〔Judd, Neil M. 1936. ''Archaeological Observations North of the Rio Colorado'', pp. 40-41. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 32. Washington, D.C.〕 Palmer’s Baja California collection recovered from a site near Bahía de los Ángeles was subsequently described and analyzed by William C. Massey and Carolyn M. Osborne.〔Massey, William C., and Carolyn M. Osborne. 1961. (''A Burial Cave in Baja California: The Palmer Collection, 1887'' ). Anthropological records 6(8). University of California Press, Berkeley.〕〔Laylander, Don. 2014. “The Beginnings of Prehistoric Archaeology in Baja California, 1732-1913”, pp. 13-14. ''Pacific Coast Archaeological Society Quarterly'' 50(1&2):1-31.〕 After the Mound Exploration project was completed, Palmer returned to botany and natural history and worked as a Smithsonian field representative, a scientist at the Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology and as a collector and “expert” at the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C〔(Smithsonian profile of Palmer )〕 until his death on April 10, 1911. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Edward Palmer (botanist)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|