Nels Christian Nelson (April 9, 1875 – March 5, 1964) was aDanish-Americanarchaeologist.
Nelson was born nearFredericia, in theFredericia municipality in the eastern part ofJutland,Denmark. He was the eldest child in a poor family. He was sent to work on an uncle's farm inMinnesota in 1892. There he started first grade at age 17, graduating from high school in 1901. He rode a cattle car toCalifornia, saved money from odd jobs, and enteredStanford University in about 1903. He transferred to theUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1905. Nelson earned his Bachelor of Letters in 1907, and an M.L. in 1908.[1]
Nelson became interested inanthropology, and went to work forJohn C. Merriam surveyingmiddens aroundSan Francisco Bay and on the California coast. Nelson later estimated he walked 3,000 miles for the survey.[2] He also worked forAlfred Kroeber, conducting fieldwork throughout California.[3] In 1911, Nelson was hired by ClarkWissler, Curator of Anthropology at theAmerican Museum of Natural History, to conduct archaeological work in the upperRio Grande valley ofNew Mexico. This project, funded by philanthropistArcher Milton Huntington, was intended to develop archaeological methods to establish the chronology of historic and indigenous sites.[4] Nelson's new wife, Ethelyn Hobbs Nelson, would be his paid field assistant. In 1912 they began work in New Mexico'sGalisteo Basin, south of Santa Fe.[2]
Nelson pioneered the technique ofstratigraphic excavation in America. During his work in the Galisteo Basin, he dug a series of 1-foot levels in trash mounds at archeological sites, classified all the pot shards he found into seven types, and calculated their frequencies by levels. These resembled sections ofnormal distribution curves, and demonstrated thatstatistical analysis of data from arbitrary levels could reveal chronological change just as could data from physically distinct strata. This technique, refined byAlfred V. Kidder atPecos, continues to be used to the present day.[5]
TheDaxi culture, aNeolithic culture, located in theQutang Gorge aroundWushan,Chongqing, inChina was discovered by Nels C. Nelson in the 1920s. The Nelsons joinedRoy Chapman Andrews on his third expedition toMongolia in 1925.[6]
Nelson served as president of theAmerican Anthropological Association, president of theSociety for American Archaeology, president of theAmerican Ethnological Society, and vice president of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science. Nelson served in a number of curatorial positions atAmerican Museum of Natural History (AMNH), ultimately asCurator of Prehistoric Archeology. He retired from AMNH in 1943, and died in 1964 inNew York City, at age 89.[7]
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