Clarence Hungerford Webb

Poverty Point is a Late Archaic period archaeological site located in the lower Mississippi Valley in West Carroll Parish occupied from ca. 1600 to 1000 B.C. It consists of several earthwork and mounds and was created toward the end of the Archaic Period by the Native American Poverty Point culture.

Clarence H. Webb (25 August 1902 – 18 January 1999) was an American medical doctor and archaeologist who conducted extensive research on prehistoric sites in the southeastern United States.

A pediatrician by profession, he became interested in archaeology on a camping trip with his sons where he found some small, triangular points.

A distinguished physician, his archaeological research included the study of Caddoan culture, and at a number of major sites such as Poverty Point, John Pearce (just N. of U.S. Hwy 171, a short distance E. of the De Soto and Caddo Parish line ; see link http://laexhibitmuseum.org/native-american-collections/archeology/#sidewidgetarea)., Gahagan, and Belcher Mound.

Webb was born August 25, 1902, to Frederick and Annie Lou Hungerford Webb in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Growing up in a rural area, he spent his early life working on family farms in Bayou Pierre in DeSoto and Caddo Parishes.

This led to a deep appreciation for the land and for hard work.

In 1919 he graduated valedictorian from Shreveport High.

In 1923 he received his undergraduate degree from Tulane University and then a medical degree in 1925.

He participated in sports and was a member of Beta Theta Pi, the Nu Sigma Nu medical honor fraternity, and the Alpha Omega Alpha and Stars and Bars honor societies.

Webb married Dorothy Dodd, daughter of Reverend Monroe E. Dodd, pastor of First Baptist Church, in 1926.

They had two sons, Clarence, Jr. and Elmon Dodd.

Webb practiced medicine in Texas, Minnesota, and Illinois from 1929 until 1931 when he received his Master's in Pediatrics from the University of Chicago.

After receiving his Master's, Webb moved his family back to Shreveport and opened the first Well Baby clinic, in the Shreveport Public Health Department, with a friend.

In the 1930s Webb met James B. Griffin, who assisted him in pottery classification.

During the same time, the University of Oklahoma began its archaeological program and Webb made friends with Robert Bell, David Baerreis, and Kenneth Orr.

Webb also met Alex Krieger on an excavation in Texas and the two collaborated on a number of projects over their careers.

Later in the 1930s Webb began to conduct his own excavations, with field most notably at Poverty Point and the Gahagan Mounds.

He conducted projects regularly over the next thirty years.

During his work at Poverty Point, Webb created an extensive and well documented surface collection from the site.

Webb conducted extensive work at the site, beginning in the late 1930s and continuing throughout the remainder of his life, writing many papers and generating extensive surface collections of the Late Archaic and Tchefuncte assemblages.

Webb's work shed light on the site, which had received minimal study prior to this due to an absence of major ceramic period occupations.

He found zoomorphic locust beads at the site that were made from carved and polished stone, usually red jasper.

The beads resembled grasshoppers and cyclical cicadas.

Webb's interest in archaeology did not occur until 1934 when he accompanied his sons on a Boy Scout trip near Mena, Arkansas.

According to friends, this day changed his life.

Webb began studying reports and techniques of well-known archaeologists such as James A. Ford.

His next move was to contact Edward Neild and Michael Beckman, two Shreveport collectors who became lifelong friends of Webb.

In 1935 Webb traveled to Poverty Point and uncovered a cache of about 1,500 stone vessel fragments, which was the first of many visits to the site either surface collecting or conducting excavations.

Even though his first large scale excavation project was some years in the future, salvage archaeology was occurring in the south during this time under the auspices of New Deal labor relief programs.

One of the sites examined was at Marksville, Louisiana where the project archaeologists, Frank Setzler, aided by James Ford, became Webb's mentors.

Over the next few years, Webb worked on many sites and met well-known archaeologists like Arden R. King, Robert Stuart Neitzel, Edwin Doran, Carlyle Smith, and William Malloy.

James Ford and Edwin Doran's interest in the stratigraphic occurrence of potsherds in middens probably influenced Webb's interest in cultural chronology and site descriptions, especially at Poverty Point.

By 1940, he was a charter member of the Society for American Archaeology and joined the Texas Archaeological Society where he attended annual meetings and participated in paper presentations.

This clinic served the area for fifty years and Webb remained there until his retirement in 1976.

He held teaching positions at four universities and served on the staff at six hospitals.

Clarence Webb died January 18, 1991, in Shreveport, Louisiana, at eighty-nine years of age.

Webb did extensive archaeological work in Louisiana and adjoining areas, where the prehistory record was replete with pottery-making and mound building cultures.

This was partly because northern Louisiana's fertile land was suitable for the agricultural peoples.

Early in his career Webb concluded there was evidence for a fleeting Folsom-Yuma (Clovis) horizon in the state, and he later excavated the later Paleoindian San Patrice John Pearce site.