Herbert Clemens Kraft (1927–2000) was an archaeologist from

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

, specializing in prehistory. He wrote numerous books about archaeology in New Jersey, the

Lenape The Lenape (, , ; ), also called the Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. The Lenape's historica ...

and the

Paleo-indians Paleo-Indians were the first peoples who entered and subsequently inhabited the Americas towards the end of the Late Pleistocene period. The prefix ''paleo-'' comes from . The term ''Paleo-Indians'' applies specifically to the lithic period in ...

of New Jersey, as well as over 170 articles in his career.

Biography

Kraft was born in

Elizabeth, New Jersey Elizabeth is a City (New Jersey), city in and the county seat of Union County, New Jersey, Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Seton Hall University Seton Hall University (SHU) is a Private university, private Catholic Church, Catholic research university in South Orange, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1856 by then-Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley and named after his aunt, Saint Elizab ...

in 1950 and finished his graduate work at Seton Hall in 1961 and at

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...

in 1969, with degrees in history and anthropology respectively. Kraft later became a professor of anthropology at Seton Hall. He participated in numerous excavations, keeping meticulous notes with details on each site. Those notes were instrumental in documenting and cataloguing the collections Herbert Kraft cultivated while a faculty member at Seton Hall University and comprise the university's museum collection which Kraft named "The Seton Hall University Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology" which includes over 26,000 objects. The museum collection includes objects produced from archaeological digs on

Leni Lenape The Lenape (, , ; ), also called the Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. The Lenape's historical territory included present-day northeastern Del ...

lands in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and northern Delaware. Other Native American cultures are also represented in the collection including; the

Aleut Aleuts ( ; (west) or (east) ) are the Indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleuts and the islands are politically divided between the US state of Alaska ...

peoples of the

Aleutian Islands The Aleutian Islands ( ; ; , "land of the Aleuts"; possibly from the Chukchi language, Chukchi ''aliat'', or "island")—also called the Aleut Islands, Aleutic Islands, or, before Alaska Purchase, 1867, the Catherine Archipelago—are a chain ...

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

and

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

as well as

Navajo The Navajo or Diné are an Indigenous people of the Southwestern United States. Their traditional language is Diné bizaad, a Southern Athabascan language. The states with the largest Diné populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (1 ...

Hopi The Hopi are Native Americans who primarily live in northeastern Arizona. The majority are enrolled in the Hopi Tribe of Arizona and live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona; however, some Hopi people are enrolled in the Colorado ...

, Pima and

Paiute Paiute (; also Piute) refers to three non-contiguous groups of Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. Although their languages are related within the Numic group of Uto-Aztecan languages, these three languages do not form a single subgroup and th ...

artifacts. Included in the collection is a large display of pottery from the American Southwest and a large collection of moccasins as well as figurines, tobacco pipes, musical instruments and weapons. Other objects in the collections include a smaller amount of Chinese, Japanese, West African, Greco-Roman and Byzantine artifacts. Kraft died of cancer on October 31, 2000 at the age of 73. In the 1950”s Kraft served as a 6th grade teacher in PS 12 – Elmora Grammar School in Elizabeth, NJ. He would often bring historical items and artifacts from his personal collection for students to see and touch. He had numerous extracted pages of the Guttenberg Bible and artifacts from around the world that he would bring to class. Kraft was well-known in his field and served as president of the New Jersey Archeological Society in the 1980's, as well as director of Seton Hall University's Archeological Research Center in South Orange, New Jersey. In addition to Kraft's duties as a professor, director of a museum and membership in various organizations, he also found time to curate exhibitions and programs at Waterloo Foundation for the Arts in

Andover Andover may refer to: Places Australia *Andover, Tasmania Canada * Andover Parish, New Brunswick * Perth-Andover, New Brunswick United Kingdom * Andover, Hampshire, England ** RAF Andover, a former Royal Air Force station United States * Andov ...

, New Jersey. Kraft often worked with his son, John T. Kraft, an anthropologist and archeologist.

Bibliography

*''Teshoas and Elongated Pebble Tools'' (1966) *''The First Petroglyph Found in New Jersey'' (1967) *''The Religion of the Delaware Indians'' (1968) *''Miller Field Site, Warren County'' (1970) *''The Plenge Site: A Paleo-Indian Occupation Site in New Jersey'' (1973) *''A Delaware Indian Symposium'' (1974) *''The Archaeology of the Tocks Island Area'' (1975) *''The Rosenkrans Site, an Adena-related Mortuary Complex in the Upper Delaware Valley'' (1976) *''Paleoindians in New Jersey'' (1977) *''The Minisink Site: An Investigation into a Late Prehistoric and Early Historic Contact Site in Sussex County'' (1977) *''The Minisink Site: A Reevaluation of a Late Prehistoric and Early Historic Contact Site in Sussex County'' (1978) *''Delaware Indians Reminiscences'' (1978) *''The Historic Minisink Settlements: An Investigation into a Prehistoric and Early Historic Site in Sussex County'' (1981) *''The Lenape: Archaeology, History, and Ethnography'' (1986) *''The Lenape Indians of New Jersey'' (1987) *''The Archaeology and Ethnohistory of the Lower Hudson Valley and Neighboring Regions'' (1991) *''The Lenape or Delaware Indians: The Original People of New Jersey'' (1996) *''"Mammoth Frauds in Archaeology" Published in Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey No. 51'' (1996) *''The Dutch, the Indians, and the Quest for Copper: Pahaquarry and the Old Mine Road'' (1996) *''The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 BC to 2000 AD'' (2001)

References

External links

* *
Herbert Kraft Papers
(archival collection finding aid) at The Department of Archives and Special Collections, Seton Hall University
Herbert Kraft Manuscript Collections
(finding aid) The Department of Archives and Special Collections, Seton Hall University {{DEFAULTSORT:Kraft, Herbert C. 1927 births 2000 deaths Writers from Elizabeth, New Jersey Seton Hall University alumni Hunter College alumni 20th-century American archaeologists Historians from New Jersey