Walter E. Klippel

Walter E. Klippel, Ph.D. (born June 11, 1942), is an archaeologist and a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville with research interests in American Archaeology, Archaeological Method and Theory, Cultural Ecology, Geoarchaeology, Taphonomy, and North American, Caribbean, and Mediterranean Zooarchaeology[http://web.utk.edu/~anthrop/faculty/klippel.html]. Klippel has been heavily involved with the analyses of faunal remains at the Brimstone Hill fortress site on the island of St. Kitts.
Introduction
Dr. Klippel’s interest in archaeology, specifically zooarchaeology, began between his junior and senior year at Central College in Pella, Iowa. The summer between these years, he participated in a field school at an Oneota culture site in Missouri. There he helped excavate several storage pits, some which were used for refuse and contained many faunal remains; this interaction sparked his interest in zooarchaeology. Although the college did not specifically have an anthropology major at the time, he received his degree in sociology and pursued his master’s in anthropology at the University of Missouri, Columbia. His chair there, Carl Chapman, influenced and guided Klippel; Chapman was a generalist some consider him to be the father of professional archaeology in Missouri. He allowed and supported Klippel’s studies in zooarchaeology, which were not as popular then in the 1960s as they are today. While working at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield, Dr. Klippel worked with Paul Parmalee, one of the first persons associated with the study of zooarchaeology in North America. Parmalee, a zoologist and biologist, assisted Klippel with his dissertation research by helping him identify faunal remains. He and Klippel later worked together on several projects for the Tennessee Valley Authority, including excavations Cheek Bend Cave. Dr. Klippel’s major archaeological interest is certainly zooarchaeology, or animal bone studies, with a specialization in fish. He has researched aquatic resources in a prehistoric and historic context, covering such topics as freshwater mussels as a prehistoric food source and estimating fish live weights from the archaeological record.
Background
Klippel was born in Meadville, PA. He received his B.A. in Sociology from Central College in Pella, Iowa in 1963. The following year, he married his wife, Susan L. Leach, on June 20; they have two children - Donald Blain and Robert Henry. Klippel received his M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Missouri, Columbia in 1965 with his thesis covering an archaeological survey of the Osage River in central Missouri; he received his Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1971 from the same institution, with a dissertation on Prehistory and Environmental Change along the Southern Border of the Prairie Peninsula during the Archaic Period. Through his career, Dr. Klippel has taught at several universities and has conducted research projects in Tennessee, Alabama, the Caribbean, and Greece. He is currently a professor at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville.
Employment History
Dr. Klippel began as a Research Assistant, then a Research Associate with the University of Missouri, Columbia from 1964 to 1969. He then held a position at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield as an Associate Curator of Anthropology from 1970 to 1972, and from 1973 to 1977 he was the Curator and head of the Anthropology Section of the museum. Also, during this time (1973-1976) he was an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Sangamon State University in Springfield, Illinois. Dr. Klippel began his teaching career at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1977 and his career as co-director, along with Dr.Bill Bass, with the Midsouth Anthropological Research Center of Knoxville in 1979. This research center was established so that contract archaeologists could perform Phase 1 and Phase II day jobs outside of the normal university system, which allowed them to work in a much more timely fashion. Up until the mid 90s, Dr. Klippel was mostly involved in contracted archaeology with the Midsouth Anthropological Research Center. However, he ended contracting in 1993 when he began teaching full-time at UT. Dr. Klippel was also the Interim Director of the Frank H. McClung Museum of Knoxville in 1990 and a Senior Fellow for the Wiener Laboratory at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece in 1992. His list of courses taught include Advanced Seminar in Archaeology, Cultural Ecology, Environment and Archaeology, Field Method in Archaeology, Midwestern Archaeology, North American Prehistory, Principles of Zooarchaeology, Laboratory Studies of the Vertebrate Skeleton, and Taphonomy and Site Formation Processes.
Research Emphases
Klippel has been involved in a wide variety of research topics throughout his career, including research on post-mortem scavengers’, such as rats, squirrels, and raccoons, effects on the taphonomic processes of deceased human individuals for forensic use - projects he has worked on extensively with Jennifer Synstelien, M.A. and Michelle Hamilton, Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Forensic Anthropology Center. The rat and squirrel projects were done in order to help estimate the time since death of deceased individuals in the forensic context. Dr. Klippel has also researched the historical context and inland use of Atlantic cod and Atlantic mackerel in relation to socioeconomic status with CR Falk and Judy Sichler. The studies conducted with CR Falk were in relation to Montana goldminers’ eating barreled cod shipped from Nova Scotia in order to save time and energy. Klippel has also assisted fellow UT Professor, Dr. Gerald Schroedl, at the Brimstone Hill site on the island of St. Kitts. Dr. Klippel conducted research on African craftsmen and their use of cattle bone discs to make buttons with Schroedl, and analyzed the carbon isotopes of cattle bones found near slave quarters. He found that the slaves’ beef had been mostly barreled in from Europe or North America, making it clear that the food was being provisioned for them. Dr. Klippel has been conducting research at Brimstone Hill since the late 90s. Currently, studies are being done in order to compare the slaves’, engineers’, and enlisted men’s diets, specifically what they ate and from where it came.
Sponsored Research Projects
Throughout his career, Dr. Klippel has worked on several sponsored research projects. Several of these have been for the Tennessee Valley Authority, with emphases including prehistoric cultural adaptation to Holocene environments in Middle Tennessee, the paleontology and excavation of Cheek Bend Cave, an archaeological survey of the Watts Bar Reservoir, East Tennessee, and archaeological investigations of Osceola Island, Sullivan County, Tennessee. Some of these projects were done in order for TVA to implement a new reservoir. Klippel and Paul Parmalee worked on excavating the area for approximately eight years, but the damn that was finally built was never implemented. Klippel also worked for the National Park Service, excavating the Late Mississippian Averbuch site near Nasville, TN; several skeletal and dental studies have been conducted using the remains found at Averbuch. Currently, Dr. Klippel is working with the University of South Alabama at Plash Island, Orange Beach, and at the Corps Site. The university has an active applied and contract archaeology program, but no faunal capabilities, thus Klippel is identifying 10,000 to 11,000 animal skeletons for them at these sites, most of those being Gulf species of fish.
Selected Papers and Books
Klippel, WE and PW Parmalee, 1974, Freshwater mussels as a prehistoric food resource. American Antiquity 39(3): 421-434.
Klippel, WE, DF Morey, and BL Manzano. 1991. Estimation of live weight of fish recovered from archaeological sites. Beamers, Bobwhites, and Blue-Points: Tributes to theCareer of Paul W. Parmalee. James R. Purdue, Walter E. Klippel, and Bonnie W. Styles, eds. Pp. 92-98. Springfield: Illinois State Museum Scientific Papers Vol. 23.
Klippel, W.E. and G.F. Schroedl 1999. African slave craftsmen and single-hole bone discs from Brimstone Hill, St. Kitts, West Indies. Post-Medieval Archaeology 33:222-232.
Klippel, W.E. and L.M. Snyder 1999. Harvest profiles, domestic ovicaprids, and Bronze Age Crete. The Practical Impact of Science on Aegean and Near Eastern Archaeology, edited by S. Pike and S. Gitin. Archetype, London.
Stafford, T.W., H.A. Semken, R.W. Graham, W.E. Klippel A. Markova, N. Smirnov, and J. Southon 1999. First accelerator mass spectrometry 14C dates documenting contemporaneity of nonanalog species in late Pleistocene mammal communities. Geology 27(10):903-906.
Klippel, W.E. 2001. Sugar monoculture, bovid skeletal part frequency, and stable carbon isotopes: Interpreting enslaved African diet at Brimstone Hill, St. Kitts, West Indies. Journal of Archaeological Science 28:1191-1198.
Klippel, W. E. and C.R. Falk 2002. Atlantic cod in the Missouri River: Gadus morhua from the Steamboat Bertrand. Archaeofauna 11:23-44.
Klippel, WE and MD Hamilton, May 2003, National Forensic Science Institute; Postmortem Scavenging of Human Remains: Identification, Description, and Time Since Death Indicators. Sponsored Research Project.
Klippel, W.E. and Sichler, J.A. 2004. North Atlantic fishes in inland context: pickled mackerel (Scombre scombrus) in the Historic Period. Historical Archaeology 38(4):12-24.
Klippel, WE, MD Hamilton, and JA Synstelien, 2005, Raccoon (Procyon lotor) foraging as a taphonomic agent of soft tissue modification and scene alteration. Proceedings of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences Vol. 11.
Klippel, WE and JA Synstelien, 2007, Rodents as taphonomic agents: bone gnawing by brown rats and gray squirrels. Journal of Forensic Sciences 52(4): 765-773.

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