The McKern Taxonomic System and Archaeological Culture Classification in the Midwestern United States: A History and Evaluation

In the first half of the 20th century three major archaeologicalculture unit classifications were formulated in the United States. The most curious onewas the Midwestern Taxonomic System, a scheme that ignored time and space. Alton K.Fisher suggested to W. C. McKern in the late 1920's that the Linnean model ofmorphological classifi­cation, which was employed in biology at a time ofpre-evolutionary thinking, might be adapted to archaeologi­cal culture classification(Fisher 1986). On the basis of this idea McKern conceived the Midwestern TaxonomicSystem and planned to present his concept in a paper at the Central Section of theAmerican Anthropological Association at Ann Arbor, Michigan, in April, 1932. Illnessprevented him from making the presentation. The first public statement was before asmall group of archaeologists at the time of an archaeological symposium, IllinoisAcademy of Science, May 1932 (Griffin 1943:327). After input from various archaeologistsa formal account was prepared as a manuscript entitled "Culture Type Classification forMidwestern North American Archaeology" at the Chicago Conference, December 10, 1932.Other participants at this conference were Samuel A. Barrett, Fay­ Cooper Cole, ThorneDeuel, Carl E. Guthe, A. R. Kelly (Cole and Deuel 1937a:34) and James B. Griffin (as agraduate student, personal communication, 1986). This classification method was morefully and formally presented three years later, in December 1935, at the originalIndianapolis Archaeological Conference (Guthe 1937). A more detailed history of theorigins of the McKern system is provided by Griffin (1943)