Samuel J. Guernsey, Curator of Archaeology at Peabody Museum, died early Friday morning at the age of 68. Heart failure abruptly ended his 27 years of service to the University. Private funeral services were held yesterday morning at his home.
He had gained national renown as a maker of habitat models for the Anthropology Department, and went into private business in 1929, doing a series of historical tableaux as well as other archaeological and ethnological groups. Shortly before his death, the firm had completed a series of tree models of the School of Forestry which may come to be considered his finest work. He was famed in the craft for his uneanny ability to give an illusion of reality in his work.
Although he entered anthropological work as a technician rather than as a scholar, he soon became an expert at identification of odd specimens. He worked for a few years in the Southwest, excavating the Betatakin site in Arizona in conjunction with Alfred V. Kidder '08, honorary curator of S.W. Archaeology, where he discovered a whole cultural sequence that has become known as the Basketmaker Culture.
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