Elmer Harp papers

The papers of Elmer Harp, Jr. contain materials related to his personal and professional life as teacher, mentor, researcher and innovator in the fields of anthropology and aerial photography. They include manuscripts, correspondence, brochures, journals, field notes, teaching materials, student papers, photographs and slides, index cards, 8 mm films, newsletters, newspapers, conference materials, as well as financial documents and receipts. The papers chronicle his education at Harvard, his time in the military as a PT boat captain during Word War II, his teaching of anthropology at Dartmouth College, and his anthropological research expeditions to the Central and Eastern Canadian Arctic, Newfoundland and Labrador where his studies focused on the Newfoundland Dorset and Pre Dorset Paleoeskimo culture and its origins. Of note are his extensive illustrated field notes, radiocarbon dating reports, artifact photographs as well as hundreds of slides and writings on the subject in manuscript and published form relating to his discovery of a link between the prehistoric Dorset Eskimo and Eskimo cultures in the Canadian Arctic and Alaska. The papers also include a large collection of aerial photographs and negatives in a variety of scales the interpretation of which helped to identify faint archeological sites supplementing Harp's traditional archeological research. Maps and charts related to Harp's research are also included.