Don Crabtree
Obituary
Don E. Crabtree, 1912 - 1980
by Ruthann Knudson
(as published by the Society for American Archaeology)
Don E. Crabtree, "the dean of American flintknappers", died in Twin Falls, Idaho on November 16, 1980, of complications of heart disease. He had been in ill health for some time and, indeed, had major health problems for much of his life. Yet he was possessed of immense energy and curiosity that pushed him to world leadership in the study of stone-tool technologies. To a great extent self-educated, he spent most of his life in the agricultural communities of southern Idaho, yet was familiar with the world's leading scholars and institutions of archaeology and published crucial papers in lithic technology.
Crabtree was born in Heyburn, a small community
on the Snake River Plain of southern Idaho on June 8, 1912. His parents
were the Reverend Ellis and Mabel G. Crabtree, and they 
provided him
with a strong ethical and educational heritage that was to serve him throughout
his life. In 1911, the Crabtrees homesteaded 140 acres in the Salmon River
Valley where they spent their summers while Don Crabtree was a child. In
1917, they moved to a 10-acre plot just outside of Twin Falls, where they
established a garden and pickle business that is still successful. They
also maintained a large tourist home. Don Crabtree's ties to his family
and native Idaho were focal elements of his life, most of which he spent
in the same Twin Falls community amidst parents and two sisters and their
families. His father died in 1967; his mother still lives in Twin Falls.
Don Crabtree finished high school in Twin Falls in 1930 and for some time worked for the Idaho Power Company. He soon decided to strike out for California where he enrolled in Long Beach Junior College sometime in the mid-1930's, intending to major in geology and paleontology. His interest in those topics, and in prehistoric archaeology had developed during a childhood and youth spent exploring south-central Idaho with its remains of prehistoric villages, contemporary Indian communities, obsidian and vitrophyre quarries and associated debitage, and even the Hagerman Fossil Beds with their Miocene horses. He had tried his hand at knapping the local natural glasses to replicate the arrowheads that were scattered over the landscape, and was fairly successful at it, but his primary attention first focused on the paleontological record. Crabtree was an action person, a thinker-while-doing, not happy just studying, and after one term at Long Beach Junior College, he dropped out of formal academic training and went the rest of his way himself. Throughout his life, he was somewhat self-conscious about this lack of college education, disliking formal speeches and putting ideas into scholarly language for publication, although he was recognized internationally as one of the most thoughtful and provocative students of prehistoric technologies.
In lieu of a college education, Crabtree began working in paleontological laboratories and by the late 1930's was preparator in the vertebrate paleontology laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Here he worked under the direction of Charles Camp and Ruben Stirton and did summer fieldwork in Nevada and California. At the same time, he became acquainted with Alfred L. Kroeber and E.W.Gifford of the Lowie Museum at Berkeley, and in the late 1930's worked as a technician in the anthropology program while he further developed his flintknapping skills. He also conducted knapping demonstrations for scholars and students at Berkeley and occasionally for Museum visitors. His subsequent lifelong concern with the behavioral implications of prehistoric artifacts, based on thorough knowledge of the technology and use of stone tools in general, undoubtedly dates to this association with Kroeber and the Berkeley anthropology program.
In 1939, Crabtree was stricken with cancer and returned home to his parents' care during what were considered to be his last days. However, massive cobalt treatments and his mother's and his indomitable patience through months of intensive care led him to recovery. He spent his recuperation period, when his mobility was limited and as he was trying to regain muscular strength, flintknapping - - making arrowheads, spearpoints, and eccentric lithic forms by the hour. What had been a virtuoso performance until that time became a confirmed craft and art, all the time being conducted amidst a personal search for information about lithic mecha nics, systems of efficient core reduction, and the significance of variations among the newly identified paleo-Indian points from the Plains and Southwest.
In January, 1938 the Ohio Historical Society established its Lithic Laboratory for the study of materials of the eastern United States, and in mid-1939 H.Holmes Ellis was hired to staff the facility while he completed his Master's thesis (Flint-working techniques of the American Indians: an experimental study, 1940) at Ohio State University. The laboratory was to function for only a few years, being discontinued on the eve of World War II, but it was a critical element in the history of modern stone-tool studies. In the spring of 1941, fully recovered and with a year of concentrated flintknapping behind him, Crabtree was invited to demonstrate knapping techniques at the American Association of Museums' annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio. As a result of that demonstration he was employed for several months in the Lithic Laboratory as a technician working with Ellis and Henry C. Shetrone, replicating eastern lithic artifacts. Crabtree was also called upon as an adviser in lithic studies to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was associated with Edgar B. Howard and the Clovis type site and other Blackwater Draw materials. It was during this period that he had his first "hands on" acquaintance with the Folsom materials, one of his lifelong fascinations, when Frank H. H. Roberts of the Smithsonian Institution called Crabtree in as a consultant in the analysis of the Lindenmeier Folsom collection. Everything was going right in the fall of 1941; the cancer was in remission, Crabtree had employment doing that in which he was most interested (working with stone tools), and he was becoming recognized as one of the leading students of that subject by major archaeological institutions. Then the United States entered World War II, the Lithic Laboratory was discontinued, and Crabtree returned to California to join the war effort. The first major phase of his career in lithic studies came to a close.
From 1941 until the late 1950's Crabtree's involvement with flintknapping was only as an avocation. He spent the war years in Long Beach where he worked as a coordination engineer for Bethlehem Steel Company, which built the ships for the Pacific effort. There he met his beloved wife, Evelyn Josephine Meadows; they were married in Long Beach in 1943. Their relationship was a strong and close interdependency, she serving as his housekeeper, traveling companion, secretary and editor, and always as his closest confidant. They never had children of their own, rather "adopting" the young students who flocked around Crabtree to learn and consult; their home was always open. Evelyn's health problems were also significant; she had lost a lung to tuberculosis when she was a young woman, and spent her last years in a long fight against cancer. Their 33 years together were a true partnership, and one did not know Don Crabtree unless one also knew Evelyn.
Following World War II, the Crabtrees returned to Twin Falls. They purchased the big family home from Don's parents, and he soon was a successful real estate salesman in a booming postwar market. Evelyn was a manager of a large savings and loan institution, where she dealt in real estate and more general financial matters. She was an astute businesswoman, and Crabtree credited her with providing their financial security in their later years. They eventually sold the large house and bought a small place out in the country just east of Twin Falls, on the Kimberly mail route, and over the years they added rooms and a shop until finally they had a modest but complete lithic laboratory and guest facility.
Crabtree was employed from 1952 until 1962 as a county supervisor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS) in Twin Falls, spending much of his time in aerial photo interpretation of soil conservation problems. He maintained his avocational interest in flintknapping, was a skilled lapidarist and fine metal worker, and even did beadwork. He continued to read voraciously, to keep up with archaeological publications, and to demonstrate flintknapping to local schools and youth groups. He also continued his investigations into the archaeology of southern Idaho, particularly its prehistory. He was locally quite well known for his knapping skills and knowledge, and that local fame led him to a reentry into the scholarly world of lithic studies in 1958.
In 1957, Earl H. Swanson, Jr. arrived at Idaho State College (now Idaho State University) in Pocatello to establish the first major archaeological program in that state. Pocatello is on the eastern edge of the Snake River Plain, some 120 miles east of Twin Falls. Swanson, who had recently completed a Ph.D. program at the University of Washington and a year's work in London, was interested in the interrelationship of environment and prehistory, in paleo-Indian studies, in the culture history of the intermountain west, and in developing a strong new archaeology program in that region. He soon heard from local people that there was a flintknapper of prodigious skill with a major regional archaeological collection living in Twin Falls, and in 1958 Swanson introduced himself to Crabtree. The deep friendship of Swanson and Crabtree, which was support for an equally strong mentor-protege partnership of the two men, was forged immediately and was to last until Swanson's untimely death in 1975. It must have been quite a moment when Swanson met the man about whom he had heard only as a local collector and knapper, and found that he had unearthed one of the world's leading practitioners and scholars of lithic technology. Swanson's international credentials and participation in the "early man" network of American archaeologists gave him access to research monies and forums that Crabtree would not then have entered on his own, and Swanson never hesitated to do whatever he could to provide Crabtree would not then have entered on his own, and Swanson never hesitated to do whatever he could to provide Crabtree with that access by extension.
In the spring of 1961 Alex D. Krieger visited Swanson at the Idaho State College Museum to see the paleo-Indian materials being found in the Birch Creek Valley and at Wilson Butte Cave, and the idea of a conference on regional lithic typology was conceived. There was enthusiastic support for the idea from other archaeologists in the West, and Richard D. Daugherty further suggested that such a conference should be initiated with a flintknapping demonstration and discussion of the technical aspects of stone-tool production. Thus, in March 1962 the First Conference of Western Archaeologists on Problems of Point Typology was held at the Idaho State College Museum and was opened with a full morning of Don Crabtree on lithic technology. Thus, Crabtree and his expertise in lithic technology and analysis were made known to a range of influential American archaeologists, and the stage was set for focusing on technological studies rather than just "types".
When Swanson first met Crabtree the latter was still working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Crabtree was also having occasional heart and vascular problems, which may have been the delayed result of the cancer treatments of 1939-1940, and in 1962 these became severe enough that he was forced to take an early medical retirement. He thus had time to concentrate on the lithic studies, which he did when he was feeling more able. In 1964 he was appointed Research Associate in Lithic Technology at the Pocatello Museum, a nonsalaried position that provided some support services and an institutional identification when applying for research monies. He retained that position until 1975.
The stimulating communication among participants of the First Typology Conference led them to seek to broaden the context of
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