Luther Sheeleigh Cressman (October 24, 1897 – April 4, 1994) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 anthropologist. He is known as the father of Oregon anthropology.

Cressman was born outside of Pottstown, Pennsylvania

Pottstown, Pennsylvania

Pottstown is a borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States northwest of Philadelphia and southeast of Reading, on the Schuylkill River. Pottstown was laid out in 1752–53 and named Pottsgrove in honor of its founder, John Potts. The old name was abandoned at the time of the...

, the son of a physician. He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1923, but feeling doubts about his vocation, began studying sociology and anthropology at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in New York. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1928, and that same year, he left the priesthood.

In 1929, he took a position as Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon

University of Oregon

-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...

. The Department of Anthropology was founded by him six years later. His first hire for the department was Homer Barnett

Homer Barnett

Homer Garner Barnett was an American anthropologist, thinker, fieldworker, and teacher.- Education :He began his studies at Stanford in civil engineering but soon quit to rethink his major. When he returned to Stanford it was as a liberal arts major with an emphasis on philosophy. He graduated...

. Cressman was the chair of the department from 1935 until his retirement in 1963.

His most significant discovery came in 1938, when he discovered a pair of perfectly preserved shredded sagebrush

Artemisia tridentata

Artemisia tridentata is a shrub or small tree from the family Asteraceae. Some botanists treat it in the segregate genus Seriphidium, as S. tridentatum W. A. Weber, but this is not widely followed...

 bark sandals at Fort Rock in Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

 that were radiocarbon dated

Radiocarbon dating

Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...

 from 10,500 to 9,300 years old, making them the oldest footwear ever discovered.

His autobiography A Golden Journey: Memoirs of an Archaeologist was awarded the 1989 Oregon Book Award

Oregon Book Award

The Oregon Book Awards are presented annually by Literary Arts, Inc. for "the finest accomplishments by Oregon writers who work in genres of poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, drama and young readers literature." -History:...

 for literary nonfiction.

Cressman's first wife was anthropologist Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s....

, to whom he was married from 1923-1927. After their divorce, he married Dorothy Cecelia Loch, a Scotswoman, in 1928. Loch, whom he always called "Cecelia", was an invaluable help in his career. They were married for 49 years, until her death in 1977, and had one daughter.

Publications

• The Sandal and the Cave
• A Golden Journey: Memoirs of an Archaeologist
• Klamath Prehistory
• Prehistory of the Far West: Homes of Vanished Peoples

Awards

• Guggenheim Fellowship
  Guggenheim Fellowship
  Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
  
  
• John Alsop King Fellowship
• Charles E. Johnson Memorial Award

External links

• Guide to the Luther Cressman papers at the University of Oregon.