Georgia Tech Engineer was the supervising archaeologist at Ocmulgee National Monument

It was the largest single archaeological project ever carried out in the USA.

(photo above) YES, the outfit worn by Arthur Kelly is identical to that worn by Indiana Jones, 50 years later! In this photo are three of the most famous North American archaeologists of the 20th century . . . Arthur Kelly, James Ford and Gordon Wiley.  Frank Lester, the third in command at Ocmulgee, who had dropped out of the University of Tennessee, is on the extreme right.  The man next to him is probably Joe Tamplin, but this is not certain.

The large round houses, typical of South America and Cuba, which the famous archaeologist, Arthur Kelly. found at the oldest levels of Ocmulgee National Monument were left out of the version of its archaeology that the public sees today in the Ocmulgee Museum. Also, not on display are any of the several hundred 2 to 3 feet diameter ceramic brine drying trays found at Ocmulgee. 

The reasons were that a later generation of archaeologists wanted the public to think that Ocmulgee was founded by people from Cahokia Mounds in southern Illinois and certainly not to suspect that Maya merchants were operating in Georgia. You see, the large brine-drying trays are typical of the Maya Civilization and are also endemic at the Maya salt-trading city of Waka in Guatemala. Waka is situated in a geographic formation identical to that of Ocmulgee and is almost exactly the same distance from the ocean. 

The joke is on these long-forgotten archaeologists, who followed in Kelly’s footsteps. Recent radiocarbon dating has proven that most of the mounds at Ocmulgee are at least 150 years older than the first mounds in Cahokia. However, their subterfuge extended beyond mere archaeological details. The important role played by the man responsible for supervising day-to-day excavations has been “edited out” of contemporary accounts of this massive archaeological project, which was carried out between 1933 and 1939.

A Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech, erased from the history books

Most Macon, Georgia residents today probably wonder how Joe Tamplin Boulevard got its name. Obviously, civic leaders thought he was “someone special” at some time in the past.  Mr. Tamplin played a major role in making Macon what it is today. However, he was also the only person with a college degree, involved with the original Ocmulgee archaeological dig, other than Dr. Arthur Kelly.

It was necessary to draw lines between several dots to get at the truth of what actually occurred in the 1930s! In 1935, Garrard and Isabel Patterson of Columbus, GA repeatedly pressured National Park Service archaeologist Arthur Kelly, to send one of his “archaeologists” at Ocmulgee National Monument to Columbus, because “there were also many Indian mounds and towns there on the Chattahoochee River. ” Kelly eventually assigned a young man, named James Ford, to survey the Columbus sites. At the time, Ford only had about a three-year liberal arts education and no degree, so he was the “low man on the totem pole.”

Apparently, Ford wanted to get back closer to his home in Mississippi and so was re-assigned by the National Park Service.  Kelly then wrote the Pattersons that he only had two archaeologists left on his staff, Joe Tamplin and Frank Lester. He added that Tamplin was also an engineer and a graduate of Georgia Tech, while Lester had “attended” the University of Tennessee. 

Lester had been in charge of the excavation of Mound D and revelation of the corn rows under the mound. As the junior archaeologist remaining, he was eventually sent to Columbus.

Say what? The only other professional with a college degree on the Ocmulgee staff other than Dr. Kelly, during its peak years of work between 1933 and 1938, was also an engineer?  His existence had seemingly been erased from history. You will never see either Tamplin’s or Lester’s names in accounts of the archaeological work at Ocmulgee, which have been written by archaeologists during the past thirty years. Yet in the 1930s, Arthur Kelly listed them as two of the three archaeologists, employed on the site.

 The National Park Service brochure and most books or articles on Ocmulgee National Monument, written by late 20th century archaeologists do not even mention Tamplin as being involved in any way with the project. I found his name mentioned briefly in the principal book written on Ocmulgee archaeology as “a foreman” at Ocmulgee, who attended the celebratory banquet at the end of the main excavation program. An article in an archaeological journal listed his name as “a senior laborer” who was invited to a 1974 conference on Ocmulgee.  Why would a laborer be invited to a professional conference? Obviously, the archaeologist-authors were trying to de-professionalize the man.

Finally, I found a book written by a Midwestern archaeologist about archaeologist, James Ford, who didn’t know that he was supposed to de-professionalize Tamplin.  He was described as “a structural engineer, employed by the National Park Service, who in 1937 prepared the structural plans for the “Earth Lodge,” after James Ford had sketched out what he wanted.  However, that statement did not explain what Joe Tamplen was doing in Macon. The book by the Midwestern archaeologist stated that “Tamplen had taken the train down from DC to be hired for the job.”  This statement was absolutely false.

As might be expected for a young man of 22 years, with three years of liberal arts education, James Ford interpreted the ruins of the so-called "earth lodge" wrong. Mandan type earth lodges would be impossible to maintain in Dixie. There were no native grasses, which produce sod in the Southeast. Lawns in Dixie today are covered with grasses, whose wild ancestors lived on the Steppes of Asia or in Siberia. The heavy year-round rain fall of the Macon Area would have caused timbers to rot in two or three years. The Ocmulgee Earth Lodge was actually a giant teepee, with its base supported by a massive red clay buttress. The clay buttress did insulate the walls up to about 8 feet. Georgia Creeks call such a structure, a chokopa, which is an Itza Maya word meaning "warm place."

Eventually, in an old National Park Service document, I found Joe Tamplin's true role in this landmark archaeological project. He was second in command to Dr. Kelly. Kelly was often called away to his office in Macon or other cities.  Joe Tamplin supervised the daily excavations in Ocmulgee National Monument. He had graduated from Georgia Tech in Civil Engineering and was living in Atlanta in 1933, when he read about the massive archeological project, planned for Macon, in the Atlanta Journal.  

Tamplin then wrote the newly-created National Park Service and offered his services. He stated that the massive movement of earth as planned in Macon needed the involvement of a civil engineer.  National Park Service officials concurred and also thought that it would be advisable to have a Georgian supervising the hundreds of WPA laborers, who would be hired locally to work on the project. 

Tamplin served as Supervising Archaeologist and Senior Engineer on the project throughout the period, when it was funded by the WPA and/or Civilian Conservation Corps. Afterward, Tamplin continued his career as a professional engineer . . . probably because there was a whole lot more job security in being a construction professional.  Just like architects can specialize in historic and prehistoric preservation, civil engineers can do likewise.  He would have been the man to go to when a client encountered a very old structure or large amounts of earth to excavate.

Why the contemporary crop of anthropologists would erase Joe Tamplin’s existence is anyone’s guess.  Most likely it was an effort to make themselves seem intellectually superior to other professionals. The horror of it all . . . a Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech supervised one of the most important archaeological projects ever sponsored by the federal government.

 And now you know!