Donated items excite archaeologists

The late Charles Van Horn made furniture for a living, but he’s more likely to be remembered for his hobby.

“He first started collecting with his dad,” said Van Horn’s son, Rufus. “He’d go with him in the fields and see artifacts.”

A Vardaman resident most of his life, Van Horn scoured the ground in Calhoun County for arrow points, pottery shards, beads and other remnants from prehistoric people.

If that were all he did, his collection would be little more than a curiosity, but Van Horn went about his pastime in a systematic way. He labeled his finds and left a trail that others can follow for generations to come.

Jeffrey Alvey, an archaeologist at Mississippi State University, put Van Horn’s achievements into perspective: “Many archaeologists will spend their careers doing similar efforts, so it’s impressive what he did in addition to having a regular job.”

Rufus Van Horn grew up around the collection, which was kept in coffee cans and cardboard boxes.

“Daddy was pretty well done by the time I can remember anything,” the 48-year-old Tupelo resident said. “I went to one site, and my memory of that was finding out what fire ants are. I remember stomping around because it was hurting.”

His dad sometimes wore a carved piece of jewelry around his neck in much the same way the person who made it must have done hundreds or thousands of years ago.

“When I got walnuts or pecans for Christmas,” Rufus Van Horn said, “Daddy would break out the nutcrackers, which were stones he’d found. They’re very effective.”

“They’re still intact,” Alvey said, “so that’s fine.”

Alvey and other MSU archaeologists have a vested interest in the artifacts. Van Horn, who died in January, was an MSU alumnus. He’d talked to a professor about donating, then shelved the idea.

Last summer, Keith Baca, an MSU archaeologist, met with Van Horn to discuss the collection.

“I explained a lot of this to him,” Baca said. “He already knew quite a bit that he’d learned on his own.”

The Charles Van Horn collection now belongs to MSU’s Cobb Institute of Archaeology. It includes nearly 2,000 items, but that isn’t what has faculty and students excited.

“A lot of people donate artifact collections, but what he did is crucial: You’ve got to keep them separated by site,” Baca said. “It’s no use to us if we don’t know where they came from. He wrote each site number on each artifact.”

Before Van Horn, it was believed that Calhoun County had about 70 archaeological sites. He documented 137, and he marked each one of them down in his copy of “Soil Survey of Calhoun County, Mississippi,” a 1965 publication by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Soil Conservation Service.

“It’s pre-GPS,” Baca said, “but

RGBORKOYKMGit’s detailed enough to get really accurate information.”

Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” It’s a statement about how science usually works. New discoveries arise out of previous finds.

“The great thing about us having these materials is the stuff is available for generations of students and researchers to study,” Alvey said. “We will continue to learn more about them through the years.”

He predicted that at least one master’s thesis will come out of the collection, and he believed Van Horn’s efforts will inspire others to get their hands dirty.

“If you’re a student who is doing research on these,” Alvey said, “you might decide it’s worth going back to the site for more artifacts.”

“That’s the key,” Baca said. “He plotted every site.”

Van Horn also gets credit for something he didn’t do. All of the items were picked from the surface.

“Most of it was in plowed fields,” said Baca, adding that digging for artifacts makes it much harder to keep detailed, scientifically valid records.

For the curious, the two stones that Rufus Van Horn used to break open nuts were probably used the same way by prehistoric natives.

The beads, tools, arrow points and pottery shards range in age from 500 to 10,000 years old, and they’ve already been educational to Derek Anderson, an MSU archaeologist tasked with classifying the collection.

“I’m kind of a recent addition to Mississippi. I started here five years ago,” Anderson said. “I was unfamiliar with a lot of the points. I narrowed it down as best I could. It was definitely a learning experience.”

Some of the items are on display in the Cobb Institute’s lobby, where anybody can visit from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays.

They’ll eventually be moved to the Lois Dowdle Cobb Museum of Archaeology in the institute’s basement.

Three archaeologists gave Rufus Van Horn a guided tour of his dad’s collection in early March. It was his first visit since the items were donated.

“It’s impressive, all he did. It’s really powerful to learn how significant the collection is archaeologically, and how his detailed work is helpful for understanding the people who lived here before us,” Rufus Van Horn said.

“It’s a great legacy. It makes me proud to be called his son.”