Errett Callahan - Academic Career

Academic Career

While at Catholic University, Callahan served as an instructor of anthropology at Virginia Commonwealth University until 1977. It was during this period at Virginia Commonwealth that Callahan pioneered the study of Living Archaeology (Watts 1997), teaching classes that combined academic study and research with primitive technological experimentation. With the help of his students, Callahan conducted seven living archaeology experiments over this time period that contributed greatly to both the understanding of native lifeways as well as the field of experimental archaeology itself. The first, the Old Rag project, was an Early Woodland encampment experiment conducted in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia in 1972. At the Old Rag project Callahan and his students produced all of the stone and bone tools used in the construction and subsequent short-term habitation of the site and its dwelling. In 1973, Callahan and his students continued their experimental work at the Wagner Basalt Quarry project in northern Arizona, where they constructed and lived in a reproduction Desert Archaic encampment much in the same way they did at the Old Rag project. After the Wagner Basalt Quarry project, Callahan began an even more ambitious undertaking in 1974 with the multi-phased Pamunkey project. This project, located along the Pamunkey River in Tidewater Virginia, consisted of a series of extended (one month) living experiences in Eastern Middle and Late Woodland encampments of their own construction. As with the previous projects everything used was produced on site, however, the extended nature of this project allowed for a more advanced understanding of Late Woodland technology, which Callahan presented for his Doctoral dissertation, Pamunkey Housebuilding: an Experimental Study of Late Woodland Technology in the Powatan Confederacy.