The death of Jesse D. Jennings in Oregon on Aug. 13 ended a monumental career. He was the founder of the Utah Museum of Natural History and was justly known as the father of archaeology in this state.
He was 88 years old when he died, after a half-century as an outstanding researcher and prolific author and editor. But as noteworthy as his accomplishments were, his personality was even more remarkable. As one of his students, I became acquainted with it early in my college career.From 1956 to 1963, Jennings led the salvage project that unearthed hundreds of sites in Glen Canyon before it filled with Lake Powell. In the '50s he excavated caves in the Great Basin that turned out to have some of the earliest evidence of man's presence in this region. He taught for 37 years at the university, the last decade or so on a seminar basis since by then he had moved to Oregon.
Jennings set the high standards that were followed by a generation of archaeologists.
When I started at the University of Utah more than 30 years ago, I wanted to be an archaeologist. So in my freshman year I took a course from Jennings, known to students as the dean of Utah archaeology.
Toward the end of our first classroom session, Jennings asked students to tick off some ways to date archaeological remains. Carbon-14 studies, said one. Check the tree-ring record, said another. Stratigraphy, said someone else. I timidly raised my hand and said glass can be dated by its layers of weathering.
"What?" Jennings growled.
I said glass found in archaeological sites sometimes gets a kind of patina from yearly weather cycles. A deposit of material, like a glass scum, forms on it each year. If an archaeologist slices through the glass and studies it by microscope, he can count the layers and figure how long it's been underground. Jennings asked me where I ever came up with a damn fool idea like that.
I was adamant and said it definitely was a recognized way to date ancient glass. I subscribed to Archaeology magazine all through high school; through some fluke, at that moment of high stress, I remembered where I had read about the technique five years earlier. I said it was in an article in the spring 1961 issue of Archaeology.
Jennings was incredulous and peeved. In my mind's eye I see him glaring through his glasses, his salt-and-pepper mustache bristling in his tanned, creased face. As he was dismissing class he told me I had better come up with that article at the next session or he never wanted to hear another peep out of me.
If you were a student in the 1960s you might understand what I did next: nothing. I forgot all about it. I showed up at the following session, innocently prepared to take notes.
"Well?" Jennings confronted me.
Horrified, I remembered the argument and felt like a moron. I confessed I had forgotten to dig up the magazine. With a dismissive, spine-chilling hurrump, he launched into another subject. I was sick, seeing my career fade out before it began.
At that point there was a stirring at the back of the classroom. Gary Fry (now an archaeologist and a professor at Youngstown State University, Ohio), stood.
"Prof. Jennings, I went to the library and I found the magazine," he said, holding it up. He had checked it out and brought it to class! There was my proof, exactly as described, in the edition I had recalled.
That was a rare lapse for Jennings. I suppose he had not read about the technique because it's only useful at sites where people had glass, as the ancient Romans did, and American Indians were his specialty. Suddenly, he respected me.
For the next few months he was my mentor. Warm, helpful, a furious smoker, a great guy to talk with, he looked out for me. He showed me through the fabulous artifact collections that were stashed in drawers and cabinets of the World War II barracks where the anthropology department had its headquarters.
He even lined up a summer dig for me, not that I asked him to. He just took over and did it, thinking it was a great career move for me. The site was on an island in the Pacific not too far from Kwajalein, the island where my family lived at the time.
I bitterly disappointed him by refusing to go. Before summer came I had been seduced away by the media; I'd started to write for the student newspaper, the Daily Utah Chronicle, and I found the controversy was delightful. I knew that neither archaeology nor journalism paid, and I figured that if I was going to be poor I might as well have fun.
That initial run-in let me know Jennings as many of his colleagues have described him since. He was challenging and intimidating, but if you stood up to him and you had your facts straight, you were all right.
Kevin T. Jones, the Utah state archaeologist, studied under Jennings in the late 1970s and early '80s. He recalls him as a demanding teacher who insisted on much from himself as well as from his students. "If you didn't follow instructions or didn't complete an assignment, you were made painfully aware of that inadequacy," he said.
"He had just an amazing mind; a very, very quick thinker; had a tremendous grasp of the anthropological literature. . . . He always told us that we as archaeologists were trained observers," Jones said.
Jennings was fiercely committed to publishing results. "He thought that was the only reason we did it (excavate). If we didn't publish, we shouldn't even be doing it," Jones said. Ultimately, the public pays archaeologists and the public deserves a product, he felt.
A colleague who did not wish to be named said Jennings was peeved at an archaeologist in his group who had not published enough about an important excavation. At a staff meeting, Jennings approached him and asked if he had a pencil.
"Yeah, here," the man said, offering one.
"Then why don't you finish writing that report?" Jennings retorted.
Students who did well, who understood what was going on, respected him greatly. But "I think there were a lot of people who were terrified of him, and they were the ones who couldn't quite cut it, couldn't perform to his standards," Jones said.
"I always thought he was fair. But he could be merciless - but fair."
George T. Armelagos, now a professor in the archaeology department of Emery University, Atlanta, and a colleague of Jennings at the University of Utah in the 1960s, called him a visionary archaeologist. "He was able to organize archaeological projects in a regional context, which was unique in his day.
"I think everybody thought small and he always saw the big pictures and thought big, and was able to think things out," Armelagos said.
"He was a brilliant scientist. He was endearing, even in his most irascible mood. At times he could be so frustrating, but you could always call him on it, you could kid him about it . . . and he would relax a little bit."
Jennings' irritability could be a tempting target. Once he and Armelagos took a helicopter to one of the famous caves that Jennings had excavated, taking a new university department head out for a look. Jennings was getting bugged by the way the new head addressed him. "This guy kept calling him Jesse and he hated it. He said, `Would you tell him to call me Jess?"'
Just to tease him, the next time Armelagos talked to him he called him Jesse - deliberately reinforcing the misimpression.
"He also could be kind," Armelagos said. Once he took a sophomore under his wing and made him the official photographer for a dig. The man later became a noted archaeologist. If Jennings found a person with talent, "no matter how young, he was willing to invest in individuals like that," he said.
In 30 years as an anthropologist, Armelagos never saw projects run as well as those Jennings conducted. "They had an incredible infrastructure," he said.
While the digging was going on, at the end of every day's work the scientists would bring in their notes, written on legal pads. Secretaries would type them up and give them to editors, who would edit them overnight. The next day the excavators would have a typed, edited copy of their notes which they were expected to revise before the next day's work.
"He had high expectations. You had to produce," he said.
Armelagos remembers dining at Jennings' home with his family and then-Gov. Calvin Rampton and Mrs. Rampton, who was an anthropology student.
"I found him interesting and able to keep the conversation moving, and dealing with a lot of issues. He was just a delightful person," he said.
Then he reflected on the compliment. "He's going to turn over in his grave when he hears these stories I'm telling about him" - because Jennings would much prefer the tales showing his tough, demanding side.