Nels Christian Nelson

Background

Nels Christian Nelson was born on April 9, 1875 in Fredericia, Jutland, Denmark. He was the son of Soren Nelson, a farmer, and of Anne Kirstine Larsdatter.

Education

Nels received his early education by attending school during seasonal furloughs from farm chores. In order to continue his education, Nelson hired himself out to a farmer near Marshall, Minnesota, where he completed grammar and high school in five and one-half years, graduating in 1901. He enrolled in Stanford University in 1901. There he began his studies in philosophy, but he transferred in 1903 to the University of California at Berkeley, where he received the Bachelor of Laws in 1907 and the Master of Laws in the following year.

Career

In 1892 Nels went to the United States and worked on his uncle's farm in Minnesota to repay the cost of his steerage ticket to New York. Nelson worked his way to California by tending stock for a family moving there.

In 1906 Nelson accompanied a friend on an archaeological expedition in California. Immediately afterward he decided to become an anthropologist and commenced studies in that field.

In 1908 Nelson became field assistant with the U. S. Geological Survey. From 1909 to 1912 he served as assistant curator at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley and was instructor in anthropology in 1910-1912.

In California, Nelson had worked under the anthropologist Pliny E. Goddard. Goddard brought Nelson to New York City in 1912 as assistant curator of prehistoric archaeology at the American Museum of Natural History. In the next years he took part in extensive excavations in the Castillo cave in Spain and at other European sites. He also continued his work in the United States, especially the Southwest, where he made his most notable contributions to archaeology.

In 1921 Nelson was appointed associate curator of North American archaeology at the American Museum, and two years later became associate curator of archaeology.

He was archaeologist on the Central Asiatic Expedition of the American Museum, an interdisciplinary project led by Roy Chapman Andrews (1925 - 1927). That project took Nelson to sites in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia as well as to Szechwan and Yunnan provinces in China. During the winters, when excavation was halted, he sailed the Ch'ang Chiang (Yangtze) River, exploring caves along the banks and surveying valleys of tributaries.

Between 1928 and his retirement in 1943, Nelson was curator of prehistoric archaeology at the American Museum, and in that position he was responsible for all the archaeological halls. His last field trip in 1941 took him to caves on the Crow Indian reservation in Montana. In 1943 he was named curator emeritus.

Through archaeology Nelson verified the hypothesis of age and area propounded by paleontologists and ethnologists. The premise is that human culture diffuses outward from a center of origin. Prehistoric pottery, found in great quantity in the Southwest, was a highly suitable test artifact, since it was the one most subject to change. Wherever Nelson excavated an apparent center for new ceramic design, he obtained sample framents from each stratum to chart the chronological evolution of styles. Shallow diggings at various distances from the center in several directions revealed a horizontal evolution of the same styles, showing the later emergence in distant areas of styles found at the center. These findings illustrated the outward spread of culture. Once Nelson had verified the principle of age and area, ethnologists applied it to hemispheres as well as to particular cultures. Nelson published numerous articles in scientific journals and books, as well as in popular periodicals.

Nelson died in New York City.

Achievements

• Nelson was one of a small group of archaeologists who, early in the twentieth century, developed scientific standards of modern archaeology. He was a pioneer in the use of stratigraphic techniques in southwestern archaeology. The stratigraphic method of excavation, now standard procedure, is based on the theory that artifacts are found in chronological layers, with the oldest stage of a culture represented in the layer furthest below the surface. One of Nelson's important excavations was of the Pueblo ruins of the Galisteo Basin in New Mexico. He also investigated Mammoth Cave and its vicinity in Kentucky, as well as sites in Missouri and Florida.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The new conquest of central Asia : a narrative of the explorations of the Central Asiatic expeditions in Mongolia and China, 1921-1930

    (Pages 892 It is the reproduction of the old book publishe...)

  • Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Region

    (Results of a survey of hundreds of shell mounds and other...)

  • Flint Working By Ishi (1916)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • The Ellis Landing Shellmound (1910)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

Personality

A quiet man devoted to his profession, Nelson was held in high esteem by his colleagues.

Quotes from others about the person

• "If I were going out on a desert island where I would have to be satisfied with the company of only one man, I'd choose him. The most wonderful thing about him, I think, is that he knows when to talk and when to keep quiet, and that is an art few people ever learn. " (Walter Granger)

Connections

On December 25, 1911, he married Ethelyn G. Field; they had no children.

Father:

Soren Nelson

farmer

Mother:

Anne Kirstine Larsdatter

Spouse:

Ethelyn G. Field