31 Facts About Irving Rouse

Benjamin Irving Rouse was an American archaeologist on the faculty of Yale University best known for his work in the Greater and Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean, especially in Haiti.

Irving Rouse made major contributions to the development of archaeological theory, with a special emphasis on taxonomy and classification of archaeological materials and studies of human migration.

Irving Rouse's family had been in the plant nursery industry for nearly a century, and Ben was planning on continuing in the family business when he enrolled at Yale University in 1930 as a plant science major.

Irving Rouse identifies his background in botany as a major factor in his lifelong interest in classification and taxonomy.

Irving Rouse claimed that his perception of the need for classification in what was at that time the young field of anthropology was a major factor in his decision to pursue a career in anthropology rather than the much more established field of botany.

Irving Rouse's dissertation was eventually published in two parts, the first exploring method and analysis entitled Prehistory in Haiti: A Study in Method, the second an application of these methods entitled Culture of the Ft.

Irving Rouse was promoted to associate curator and research associate.

Irving Rouse held many positions in professional organizations, including serving as editor of American Antiquity, president of the Society for American Archaeology, vice president of the American Ethnological Society, associate editor of American Anthropologist, and president of the American Anthropological Association.

Irving Rouse was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Guggenheim Fellow.

Irving Rouse was a major contributor to the study of Caribbean archaeology, and his contribution to this field began with his dissertation, which was broken down into two parts and dealt with the culture of the Ft.

Irving Rouse was unable to discover any definitive linguistic information about the Couri, nor was he able to find information about their clothing, shelter, or population.

Irving Rouse suspected the Couri groups were semi-nomadic and band-like in structure due to the small, shallow nature of the sites excavated.

Irving Rouse was unable to discern anything about the religion practiced by the Couri groups, if that concept existed at all for them.

The second culture Irving Rouse identifies is called the Meillac group.

Irving Rouse identifies the Meillac groups as sedentary agriculturist, who relied not only on shellfish, seafood, and birds for subsistence, but they probably cultivated corn and manioc and collected wild vegetables.

Irving Rouse believed that they would have likely spoken the Arawak language, as they were likely the predecessors of the Carrier people, who spoke Arawak.

Irving Rouse believed that the attire of the groups would have been very light, as there is no evidence of clothing production.

Irving Rouse believes that Carrier people spoke the Arawak language, and were sedentary agriculturalist who hunted small animals and shellfish and, like Meillac groups, cultivated manioc and corn, along with other wild vegetables.

Irving Rouse began doing fieldwork in the Caribbean in 1934, when he worked in Haiti on the material that would lead to his dissertation.

Irving Rouse's segment was titled Archaeology of the Maniabon Hills, Cuba where he examined artifacts from a number of sites in Cuba and classifies them as either having been inhabited by Ciboney Indians or Sub-Tainos.

Irving Rouse returned to the island in 1953 to do some additional work with John Goggin.

In 1963 Rouse collaborated with Jose M Cruxent on a publication examining Venezuelan archaeology.

In 1973 Irving Rouse had a heart attack while on a project in Antigua, signaling the end to his fieldwork career.

One major contribution Irving Rouse made to Caribbean archaeology involves the reconstruction of the migrations that were responsible for the populating of the islands.

Irving Rouse believed that the population of the Caribbean occurred in four migrations from mainland South America The first migration came in what Irving Rouse called the "lithic" age, which happened around 6000 years ago based on the dates of the earliest sites on the islands.

In 1986 Irving Rouse published Migrations in Prehistory: Inferring Population Movement from Cultural Remains, a volume that included migratory hypotheses regarding the Taino, along with Polynesian, Japanese and Eskimo migrations.

The work that Irving Rouse did on the Taino culture is still relevant today due to what is being called the "Taino Revival" movement, which claims that contrary to the belief of most, the Taino people are not extinct, as most history books claim.

Irving Rouse was a proponent of the cultural historical approach to archaeology, and in "The Strategy of Culture History", Irving Rouse identifies and examines the goals of this approach.

Irving Rouse believed that classification was knowledge, and that a complete culture history could be produced by identifying and classifying cultures and placing them in a chronological and spatial framework.

Irving Rouse developed his mode-attribute analysis technique, which looks at clusters of traits independently of type, as an alternate to type-variety analysis because he felt it was more sensitive to change through time.

On July 24,1939, Irving Rouse married Mary Mikami, a fellow graduate student in anthropology at Yale.