In 1930, he became curator of the Alabama Museum of Natural History, and in 1932, he received archaeological training from the University of Chicago Field School.
[4][5] During World War II, DeJarnette served as a coast artillery officer in New Guinea and the Philippines and kept a journal and photographs that were later published by his daughter.
[6] After this service, he became the first curator at the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee for five years before returning to the University of Alabama in 1953, where he began his career as professor of sociology and anthropology and received his master's degree in 1959.
In 1962, Stanfield-Worley Bluff Shelter produced the first Dalton tradition radiocarbon date in Alabama, approximately 7,000 years BC.
Though the radiocarbon data could not be directly associated with a culture, the sample was taken from a stratum located below a Dalton zone and is believed to represent a Paleoindian occupation of the shelter.