Bird, Junius Bouton, 1907-1982

Dr. Junius Bouton Bird; b. Sept. 21, 1907, Milton, New York; d. April 2, 1982, Spuyten Duyvil, Bronx County, New York; burial: Greenwood Union Cemetery, Rye, New York; Junius Bouton Bird was born in a small house* in Rye, NY, to a family steeped in scientific tradition. His formal education stopped after one year at Columbia University; instead he underwent a self-education in archaeology by going to the Arctic five times on the schooner "Morrissey" (now the "Ernestina" at New Bedford, Mass) in the company of scientists from various institutions. He experienced years of exploration and archaeological excavation and decades of detailed analysis of excavated material. In 1958 Wesleyan University awarded him an honorary D.Sc. He was long a member of the Explorers Club (NYC) and several professional societies and received two important medals.
ARCTIC EXCAVATIONS. in the late 20's and early 30's he honed his archaeological skills at various sites from Greenland to Alaska while on the Bartlett expeditions on the Morrissey. On the Labrador coast in 1934, with Peggy, his wife, he excavated several Inuit sites.
CHILE. In 1934-35, he explored most of the south Chilean archipelago with his new wife, Peggy, in a 19 ft. fishing boat. They encountered rather few sites and these yielded little, but he did develop techniques that he used for the rest of his career. After five months in that wild, almost uninhabited region, they sold the boat in Punta Arenas in the Straits of Magellan, bought an old Model T, and wandered widely over Chilean Patagonia for the next two years. In three sites (including the world famous Pali Aike and Fell's Cave sites), they found early human remains, some associated with bones of extinct horses and giant ground sloths and extending back 11,000 years. Then he (with family in tow) went to the north coast of Chile (1941-42) traveling from site to site in an old touring car with trailer. In both regions he established long cultural sequences that still serve today.
PERU. In 1946 the family went to the north coast of Peru in order to excavate the oldest possible human refuse deposits. A very large mound, Huaca Prieta, was chosen; later its first occupation proved to have been 5000 years ago. There he discovered the oldest New World textile art then known, as well as various primitive cultigens, some important carvings, and evidence of a humongous tsunami. During these and other excavations, Junius and associates developed various techniques, including:
• excavation of a stratigraphic block defined by trenches,
• systematic screening of excavated soil,
• application of radiocarbon dating to New World archaeology,
• collection and analysis of many ancient cultigens and useful plants, and
• analysis of ancient and modern textile manufacture.

TEXTILES. Perhaps his greatest contribution was starting the study of Pre-Colombian textiles in a scientific way and to conserve these treasures for posterity. Peru has long been home to an incredible array of textile decorations and weaving techniques. He revealed the complex textile art hidden in the hundreds of 4,000 year-old rags through detailed microscopic analyses of their structure, then helped to define the long sequence of Andean textiles. He guided the study of modern Andean textiles and found that some of the earliest fabricating techniques still survive in eastern Colombia.
BOOKS. Excavations in Northern Chile (1943), Andean Culture History (with Wendell C. Bennett) (1949, 1964), Paracas Fabrics and Nazca Needlework (with Louisa Bellinger) (1954), Travels and Archaeology in South Chile (with John Hyslop, Gordon R. Willey, Margaret Bird) (1988), The Preceramic Excavations at the Huaca Prieta, Chicama Valley, Peru (with John Hyslop and Milica D. Skinner) (1985).
Several much longer biographies of JBB are available.
*This house is now the property of the City of Rye, managed by the Committee to Save the Bird Homestead.

Junius Bouton Bird (1907–1982), born in Rye, New York, was an American archaeologist who was appointed curator of South American Archaeology at the American Museum of Natural History in 1934.[1] His contributions to the study of ecology, climate, and pre-Columbian archaeology earned him several awards including: The Viking Fund Medal for Archaeology (1956) and The Order of "El sol de Peru" (1974). In 1961 he was elected as the president of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bird has been cited as a possible real-life inspiration for the fictional movie character Indiana Jones.

Junius B. Bird included in the list of characters recorded by John A. Pope.