Albert Clanton Spaulding (August 13, 1914 – May 29, 1990) was an American anthropologist and processual archaeologist who encouraged the application of quantitative statistics in archaeological research and the legitimacy of anthropology as a science.
During his time as a master's student at the University of Michigan, he joined the Works Progress Administration of the New Deal as an archaeological supervisor, participating in projects throughout South Dakota, Nebraska, Mississippi, and Kentucky until 1941.
While his dissertation stalled, Spaulding took advantage of his time and joined the War Mapping Program of the U.S. Forest Service as an assistant topographic and photogrammetric engineer.
He also accepted the position of Assistant Curator of the university's Museum of Anthropology, where he spent most of his time administering the archaeological and ethnographic collections and exhibits.
[16] He believed using cluster algorithms to group artifacts of similar attributes favored by the maker— corroborated by chi-squared tests— produced such meaningful and evident types, giving credence to the methods of evolutionary archaeology.
[17][18] In response, James Ford took the side of a nascent post-processualism and contested Spaulding's self-perceived emic modus operandi, declaring that archaeological types are more or less subjective constructs of the archaeologist and that the concept of culture itself is quite etic.
[20] Even so, Ford believed that archaeological types could, in some measure, reflect cultural norms, but the idea that they were mostly subjective units created through trial and error and convenient testing dominated his understanding.
[22] The lack of any goodness of fit testing left Ford's seriation of types questionable in the absence of mathematical precision and sophistication— a virtue that Spaulding constantly sought to refine.
[27] This materialistic comprehension of types clashed against Spaulding's essentialist notion of the same, and it is argued that the two scholars were unaware of the stark differences in theory and question in each of their ripostes.
[28] The Ford-Spaulding Debate hardly resolved the uncertainty of types and prompted many readers and participants to simply compromise; both Spaulding and Ford, in their own rights, were correct.
He was known for urging his fellow scholars to make use of quantitative statistics in archaeological research and maintaining his belief that anthropology was a rightful scientific discipline.
[30] As a result, his rigorous statistical methodologies and perseverance towards due scientific recognition remain pivotal elements in the historical evolution of archaeological research.
[34] Binford, once a graduate student at the University of Michigan, credited Spaulding as his "most valuable teacher", "an intellectual rock of constructive thought and keen insight.
[38] Although Spaulding's discussion focused largely on form and its conceivable statistical measurements, his understanding of the reality of all three dimensions can be considered a moment of clarity in the theory of archaeology.
He carried this perspective with him to his director's chair at the National Science Foundation, transforming the way the agency viewed the discipline of anthropology and instituting an invaluable resource.