Author: Marshall B. McKusick
1970, 181 pp.
The Davenport Conspiracy was the first publication of the Office of the State Archaeologist. In this work, Marshall McKusick closely examines one of the major controversies in the interpretation of precontact America: the “discovery” of inscribed tablets and elephant shaped pipes that were purported to support the racist concept of ancient “Mound Builders”, a lost race with Old World cultural links credited with construction of burial mounds and other earthworks found throughout North America. McKusick studied public records and unpublished documents from the Davenport Academy exposing a sordid example of amateur investigations gone awry during the difficult transition to professionalism in American archaeology.
