James Ford was born on February 12, 1911
among the hills and small farms of Water Valley, Mississippi. Although he had
no previous archaeological training, Ford began his career collecting Native
American artifacts for the Mississippi
Department of Archives and History shortly after high school graduation.
This early experience sparked his interest in archaeology, particularly in
Southeastern American Archaeology.
In 1927, Ford enrolled in Mississippi College in Clinton, Mississippi. He continued his work for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History for three summers consecutively. It was during this time that a man by the name of Henry B. Collins, an archaeologist for the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution , became Ford's mentor, teaching him the finer arts of stratigraphy, artifact typology, and seriation on several archaeological expeditions to Alaska.
Ford received a National Research Council grant in 1933 with which he studied several archaeological sites in Mississippi and Louisiana. From this research he published his first paper entitled, Analysis of Indian Village Site Collections from Louisiana and Mississippi (1936) wherein he formulated an archaeological chronology of these areas. The same year his paper was published, Ford received an Associate Degree from Louisiana State and shortly thereafter began his graduate studies at this same university.
A loyal Americanist most interested in Southeastern prehistory, Ford concentrated on Southeastern ceramic typology for the majority of his life. Ford was strongly influenced by the ideas of Leslie White, thus, believing in the concept of cultural evolution (diffusion). He took a scientific, systematic approach to archaeology, successfully avoiding social anthropology and its explorations into the human dimension of culture. As far as Ford was concerned, people were merely the "carriers" of culture.
In 1940, Ford continued his graduate study with his enrollment at Columbia University. During his study he made a trip to South America to study Latin American Archaeology under the Institute of Andean Research. In the summer of 1942, Ford served as a Civilian Specialist in the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps. Having had prior experience with Alaska's extreme conditions, he developed protective Arctic clothing and gear for the troops. On his re-entrance to academic life, Ford resumed his archaeological study of the Southeastern United States. From late 1945 until early 1946 Ford assisted in the survey and seriation study of ceramics in the Viru Valley of Peru.
Upon his return to the U.S., Ford was offered and accepted a position as a Curator at the American Museum of National History in New York. He worked there for the next eighteen years. He did, however, continue his archaeological fieldwork in the southeast United States, Alaska, Mexico and Peru. While at the museum, Ford studied prehistoric sites in Texas, became an Archaeological Consultant for the Louisiana State Park Service, published numerous archaeological studies of the Southeast and Alaska, and in 1963 he was elected the President of the Society for American Archaeology.
In 1966, after eighteen years at the Museum of Natural History, Ford resigned having just completed his last major archaeological study. He had surveyed and excavated on the Veracruz coast of Mexico in search for any existing evidence for a relationship between Mesoamerica and the Southeast. Ford hoped to prove a historical link existed between the Americas through similarities in their ceramic pottery. His diffusionist vision was finally presented in his final work entitled, A Comparison of Formative Cultures in the Americas: Diffusion or the Psychic Unity of Man? This work was published in 1969, about a year after his death. James Ford died of cancer on February 25, 1968 at the age of 57.
Willey, Gordon Randolph. Portraits in American Archaeology, University of New Mexico Press, New Mexico, 1988.
Written by: Students in an Introduction to Anthropology Class, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota 1999