Clarence B. Moore's archaeological legacy

Clarence B. Moore will probably always be both vilified and praised among modern day Florida archaeologists. Some say he destroyed valuable mounds containing information about early inhabitants of the peninsula. Others, however, point to the wealth of information about the early inhabitants of the peninsula that he left to be studied.

Clarence B. Moore

For all the concerns some scientists have about the perhaps slipshod methods of Moore and his contemporaries in excavating shell middens, there is no denying that Moore preserved a treasure trove of artifacts that provide significant insight into the lives of those early people.

Much of what he uncovered is chronicled in volumes like Certain Aboriginal Remains of the Northwest Florida Coast, a copy of which is in the collection of rare and unusual books at Lighthouse Books, ABAA. It was published in 1902.

Moore always wanted to be an archaeologist. Unfortunately for him, he was born into a wealthy family. His father was the head of a successful paper company in Wilmington, Delaware. He was educated in France and Switzerland. He graduated from Harvard in 1873. He spent the next five years traveling the world, a young man fascinated by everything, especially archaeology and with the means to travel and learn.

But all that changed in 1878, when his father died and he was expected to take over the paper company. He spent more than a decade running the company and did it quite well, accumulating personal wealth as well as supporting the family.

In the late 1880s, at the age of 40 and with a fortune sufficient to pursue his passion, he left the paper company to others to operate and began to study archaeological sites in the southern United States. He did so for the next 30 years.

Steamship Gopher

Moore had the means to outfit a flatbottomed steamboat called the Gopher, which he used to travel rivers and streams along the Gulf coast during the fall, winter and spring. He spent summers at home in Philadelphia, writing reports for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

Moore was an early photography enthusiast as well. Accordingly, his book is filled with photographs of the artifacts he recovered from the middens he explored. Each is carefully catalogued and recorded.

During the summer, while Moore was writing in Philadelphia, his pilot would explore rivers and visit landowners to arrange for permission to dig in their shell middens and sand burial mounds the following winter.

Moore was one of the first archaeologists to explore Florida archaeological sites. His methods might leave some modern archaeologists aghast but he nevertheless provided information that surely would have been lost as later roadbuilders leveled middens to create roadbeds crisscrossing Florida. He is said to have died in St. Petersburg in 1936.