By David Anderson
In Memoriam
September 28, 2024

Arkansas archeology, and indeed Central Mississippi Valley, southeastern and midwestern, and all of American archeology, lost a great colleague and scholar earlier this week, Dan F. Morse. Dan had conducted archeology in many states, and made important discoveries at a lot of well-known sites, some made more so because of his work and prolific writings on those sites, including Etowah, Cahokia, Steuben, Pinson, Nodena, Parkin, Brand, Sloan, Zebree, and many, many more, almost all with his wife, Phyllis, after they met in the late 1950s.
Dan F(ranklin) Morse served as the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s station archeologist at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, where he was also a Professor of Anthropology, for thirty years, from the late 1960s until his retirement in the late 1990s. Dan and Phyllis were generous with their time, knowledge, and hospitality with the students, avocational archeologists, and more senior professional colleagues who they knew. For many of us, he was a true mentor—for many decades helping then-young students and Arkansas Archeological Society members like Al Goodyear, Chris Giliam, Michael Million, Scott Akridge, myself, and many more, to follow a lifelong pursuit and love of archeology.
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Figure 1. Dan Morse at Zebree 1975, showing the project excavation map to colleagues working at or visiting the site (l-r) Bruce Smith, Jim Price, Roger Saucier??, Cindy Price, Dan Morse, Mark Raab, May Lucas Powell.
I first met Dan in May of 1975, when I drove out to Jonesboro to work on the Zebree Archeological Project, where Dan and Phyllis were the project directors, working with a remarkable team of scholars (Figure 1). I’ll never forget them sharing their home with arriving crew members before we all moved to housing closer to the site, with project planning and feeding going on simultaneously, while a dozen or more of us crashed on their living and dining room floors. Dan and Phyllis gave me great advice, both archeological and personal, then and ever since; when I married a few years later, Dan and Phyllis were as close to archeological parents as Jenalee and I have ever had. We met many times with them down through the years, at their homes in Florida and North Carolina, at SEAC meetings, and at barbecues at our house in South Carolina, especially in recent years during visits to Al Goodyear’s dig at the nearby Topper site (Figure 2). Dan and Phyllis regularly visited archeological sites, and their insights were always important and welcome.
Dan and Phyllis were liked and admired by many, and they were especially honored and pleased by the publication of a volume in 1999 entitled Arkansas Archaeology: Essays in Honor of Dan and Phyllis Morse. This volume was edited by his Survey colleagues Robert C. Mainfort Jr, and Marvin D. Jeter, with essays by many of his students and colleagues. Dan and Phyllis also received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005 from the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, which they attended faithfully for many decades, giving many papers. In later years, they became something of a fixture in the book room, where many of us expanded our libraries and antique china collections markedly from their offerings.
For those interested in learning more about Dan and Phyllis Morse’s contributions to archeology, the Wikipedia entry on Dan Morse and the Mainfort and Jeter book contain wonderful information about their careers.

 

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Figure 2. Dan and Phyllis Morse visiting the Topper site, Allendale County, South Carolina May 2015. (l-r) Shane Miller, David Anderson, Al Goodyear, Dan Morse, Phyllis Morse.