Charles Conrad Abbott (June 4, 1843 – July 27, 1919) was an American archaeologist and naturalist.

[1] In 1876, he announced the discovery, later confirmed by other archaeologists, of traces of human presence in the Delaware River Valley dating from the first or "Kansan" ice age, and inferentially from the pre-glacial period when humans are believed to have entered upon the North American continent.

[3] However, today the consensus of archaeologists is that most of Abbott's "Trenton Gravel Implements" date from the Middle Woodland period of about A.D.

From 1890 to 1894 he served as the first curator of the University of Pennsylvania's newly organized Department of American Archaeology.

His book Primitive Industry: Illustrations of the Hand-work in Stone, Bone, and Clay of the Native Races of the Northern Atlantic Seaboard of America (Salem, 1881) detailed his hypothesis arguing for the presence of pre-glacial man in the Delaware Valley.