Early Mormonism and the Archaeological World View

"Early Mormonism and the Archaeological World View" connects the emergence of American archaeology to early Mormon church history, tracing a shared preoccupation with a legible landscape as spiritual or cultural inheritance.... [ view full abstract ]

"Early Mormonism and the Archaeological World View" connects the emergence of American archaeology to early Mormon church history, tracing a shared preoccupation with a legible landscape as spiritual or cultural inheritance. Joseph Smith's revelation and subsequent retrieval of the golden plates that would become The Book of Mormon (1830) is not only the foundation of a new American religion but also evidence of a growing archaeological interest in the American landscape. This "archaeological turn" was marked by formal and informal investigations of the earthworks in the Mississippi valley, the growth of activities like the 'seeing' or divining that led Smith to his discovery, and the foundation of the first archaeological societies. As a sacred and secular paradigm, archaeology required a privileging of objects in situ, producing a metaphysics of place that historicized terrestrial depth. The paper traces Mormon scripture's integration of the American landscape into its vision of divine providence and connects this to emerging secular archaeology, bringing this archaeological relationship to the earth into conversation with expansionist early national imaginings, which saw the country spreading out upon the surface of the earth.