Don
E. Crabtree was born in Heyburn, Idaho on June 8, 1912. The Reverend Ellis and
Mabel Crabtree were his parents.
He was a master craftsman in the art of stone toolmaking. He
was called "the dean of American flintknappers". Crabtree's
research is important because it pioneered the development of experimental
archaeology and the application of lithic technology
to problems of cultural behavior and cultural history. Crabtree's participation
and involvement in society is apparent. Crabtree was an active person who was
not happy merely enrolled in school so he dropped out of college after just one
term. Even with his lack of formal education, Crabtree actively shared his
knowledge of stone tools with others at the University
of California in Berkeley by 1930. In 1939, he
discovered he had cancer and, thus, caused a brief lapse in his archaeological
studies. Determination could not be deterred, because he
was soon employed by the Lithic Lab at the
Crabtree was sent to serve his country as a shipbuilding engineer
for Bethlehem Steel Company during World War II. It was here that he met
his wife and married in 1943. After the war, Crabtree retired to his home state
of
Retirement
appeared to serve Crabtree well as many accomplishments of his were obtained
during this time. As a retiree Crabtree stayed active as he continued flintknapping, a method by which people work stone into
tools, also called flaking or chipping. Flintknapping
involves striking or punching carefully controlled flakes off of stone. He also
served as the Co-Director of
Many
other extraordinary jobs and awards were obtained throughout Crabtree's later
life as well. Between 1964-75 he was appointed
Research Associate in Lithic Technology at
Crabtree
will be remembered for "Crabtree's Law", which simply states that
"the greater the degree of final finishing applied to a stone artifact,
whether by flaking, grinding and/or polishing, the harder it is to conclude the
lithic reduction process which produced the stone
artifact." Crabtree's Law serves as a technological rationale for use in
modern scientific studies of lithic sources in
correlation with techniques for tracing the distribution of material from their
sources to the final location of discard. What Crabtree's Law argues is that
the final finishing state in the production of many types of stone artifacts
actually erases visible, precious steps in the lithic
reduction process. One needs to go beyond and discover the technological
processes by which the tools were produced if they want to truly analyze the
stone artifact.
Perhaps
the most important printed contribution of Crabtree's career was An
Introduction to Flintknapping. This well
illustrated glossary became a standard reference for most lithic
studies scholars in
Throughout
all his travels, however, Crabtree remained loyal to his home state of Idaho as
he handed down his reference library, personal collection, and two yearly
$1,000 scholarship trust funds to the University
of Idaho after his death on Nov. 16, 1980 in Twin Falls,
Idaho. Donald
E. Crabtree was an archaeologist, a pioneer, and a generous man whose immense
energy and curiosity pushed him to world leadership in the study of stone tool
analysis. He was a modest, humble man who believed his lack of a formal college
education was a reflection of his not really being a scholar.
Plew, Mark G., James C. Woods and Max G. Pavesic. Stone Tool Analysis-Essays in Honor of Don E. Crabtree, Albuquerque:
Knudson, Ruthann, American
Antiquities, Society for American Archaeology, Vol. 13, c1982 pp. 336-43
University
of Southern California
Written by: Sarah Schmitt