In 1931, in Lima, Illinois, Stuart
Struever was born. As a boy, Stuart Struever enjoyed hunting and
fishing with his two brothers, Rudy and Carl. His father, Carl Struever,
was the manager of the American Nickeloid Company, where Stuart had his first
exposure to archaeology when he was nine. From then on, he was determined to
become an archaeologist.
Struever received his Bachelors Degree in English Literature in 1953 from Darmouth College, with a minor in Anthropology. He then went on to do his graduate work at Northwestern University. It was there he earned his Masters Degree in Anthropology. Struever furthered his studies by earning his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Berkeley when he was only 24. Struever then returned to Northwestern so he could teach and later became the Chairman of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology. Every summer, Struever took a number of students on various excavation projects. He conducted excavations at Snyders Site, Hopewell Site, Apple Creek Site, and of course the Koster Site. In 1962, Struever published his writing entitled Implications of Vegetal Remains from an Illinois Hopewell Site.
Stuart Struever is famous for his work with the Koster Site. In fact, he even wrote a book about it called, Koster: Americans in Search of Their Prehistoric Past, co-written by Felicia Antonelli Holton, published in 1979. The Koster Site was an unexpected discovery on a farm located in Greene County, Illinois, about fifty miles northwest of St. Louis, Missouri, and about 270 miles southwest of Chicago. The farm was owned by Theodore and Mary Koster. This famous site contained fourteen different horizons which are identifiable layers or levels, each of which contained a single prehistoric culture.
The Koster Site changed the view people had of archaeology. Formerly, they believed an archaeologist to be a person digging for buried treasures in some far away place like Egypt, but as a result of Koster, the stereotype was revised. Archaeological discoveries can and are found in nearby places. At the time, he was thirty-nine and an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
In 1964, Stuart Struever became the founder and Director of the Center for American Archaeology in Kampsville, Illinois. This center became a main source of information on archaeology and procedures for the public including students. It explained how archaeologists interpret the past and provided a new vision of how archaeology could be done. This model was then carried to Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado, a second remarkable institution. Struever was the President of this institution until 1992. Also, in 1975 and 1976, he was the President of the Society for American Archaeology. He retired in 1992.
Struever’s life was not all archaeological work. Between schooling he held a number of various jobs ranging from a cab-driver to working for a packaging firm. However, no matter what jobs Struever held, he made important contributions to the field of anthropology. In 1995, after a life of accomplishments, Struever received a Distinguished Service Award from the SAA (Society of American Archaeology). Overall, Struever brought enthusiasm for public archaeology to professionals and lay people alike.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Struever
Written by students in an Introduction to Anthropology course at MSU-Mankato
Edited by Amy Landin, 2007