The creator of this innovative and much-used database, Richard E. “Dick” Morlan, died on 2 January 2007. This was just a few weeks after he had formally retired from the Canadian Museum of Civilization where he had worked for 37 years. Although afflicted with a debilitating neurophysiological disease during the last two years of his life, he continued working to expand and improve the database as long as he was able. Those results are incorporated in Dr. Matthew Betts’ recent update.

Dick was born in Woodstock, Virginia and earned his BA at George Washington University where he studied archaeology under Dr. Jack Campbell. Campbell took him to Alaska for his first field season, during which Dick developed a life-long interest in faunal analysis. He continued studying archaeology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where he obtained MA and PhD degrees. There, he also became acquainted with archaeologists from the National Museum of Canada (parent of the Canadian Museum of Civilization). In 1969, he was hired by the National Museum as Yukon Archaeologist. During the next 12 years he made milestone contributions to the late prehistory and early history of the Yukon with investigations at Klo-kut, Cadzow Lake and other sites. But perhaps the highlight of this era was his organization and direction of the Yukon Refugium Project, a multidisciplinary search for the earliest peopling of North America. This six-year study involved geology, stratigraphy, palynology, palaeontology, archaeology, taphonomy and numerous forms of chronology. Although he didn’t find “the archaeological needle” (a primary archaeological site of Pleistocene age) in the “stratigraphic haystack,” his work prompted much closer analysis of animal bones for possible signs of human alteration and introduced taphonomy to Canadian archaeology.

Dick survived a plane crash in the Yukon in 1981, which reduced his enthusiasm for northern fieldwork. That year he moved to the vacant Plains Archaeologist position and turned his attention to a number of collaborative projects, first in southern Alberta with Jack Brink at the Head-Smashed-In site, and later with Ernest Walker at Wanuskewin Heritage Park and Ian Dyck at the Sjovold site. In all these projects his contributions centered on faunal analysis, but also included taphonomy, stratigraphy and chronology.

During the period he was Plains Archaeologist, Dick was assigned two other roles – technical editor for the Museum’s Archaeological Mercury Series and manager of the Museum’s radiocarbon dating program. The first gave him a wide acquaintance with the Canadian archaeological literature and the second led him to the realization that an up-to-date compilation of standardized, contextualized Canadian radiocarbon dates, from all sources, would be a tremendous boon to researchers. He started this compilation in a small way, simply by updating the Museum’s list of its own dates. Then he began to compile and evaluate certain Plains radiocarbon dates. When he became Curator of Paleoenvironmental Studies in 1989, a position he held until retirement, he had the freedom to expand his interests nationally and internationally. Dick took this opportunity to engage in an amazingly detailed search of a vast literature. Beyond that, he entered into extensive correspondence with archaeologists, geologists and palaeontologists across the northern half of the continent concerning unpublished or incompletely published radiocarbon dates and date compilations. The final result was the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database.

We miss Dick. He was a prodigiously productive scholar, a first-rate scientist, an inspiration to colleagues, a mentor to students, a discipline builder and a friend. It would be a comfort for him to know that his massive radiocarbon database continues to be useful and that Matthew Betts has agreed to maintain and develop it for the foreseeable future.

Ian Dyck, PhD
Curator of Plains Archaeology
Canadian Museum of Civilization

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