Glenn Albert Black

American archaeologist 1900–1964)
As with many archaeologists in the 1910s and 1920s, Black did not attend college. He was largely self taught. His only formal professional training in archaeology was with Henry C. Shetrone in Columbus, Ohio, at the Ohio State Museum, where he worked from October 1931 to May 1932. Black was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree from Wabash College in 1951.

Black and Ida May Hazzard married On October 27, 1931. She shared his interest in archaeology and joined him in the excavations at Nowlin Mound. The couple moved to the Angel Mounds site in the late 1930s.

Most of Black's research took place in Indiana. Although he never attended college and did not earn a degree in archaeology, Black is considered to have been the first full time professional archaeologist focusing on Indiana's ancient history. He was also the only professional archaeologist in the state
until the 1960s. In addition, Black became a well respected researcher, an Indiana University lecturer, an author, and an authority on the prehistory of Indiana.

Black launched his career as a professional archeologist after volunteering in 1927 at Albee Mound in Sullivan County, Indiana. (Albee Mound was the first professional archaeological excavation in Indiana.) Black also worked on the Whitewater Valley archaeological survey in Indiana in the late 1920s. Both projects were led by Christopher B. Coleman, director of the Indiana Historical Commission (which later became the Indiana Historical Bureau), and J. Arthur MacLean, director of the John Herron Art Institute, and sponsored by the Indiana Historical Society. Through these projects, Black met and befriended Eli Lilly, who became president of Eli Lilly and Company in 1932. Lilly shared Black's interest in Indiana prehistory and financially supported and encouraged Black's archaeological career. Lilly paid for Black's studies in Ohio and initially funded Black's archaeological work in Indiana with his own funds, including Black's salary during his early years at the Indiana Historical Society. Black wrote to Dr. Coleman to volunteer his services as an archaeologist, and in 1931, when the Fairbanks, Morse and Company relocated to Wisconsin, Black resigned his position in order to stay in Indiana and support his family. Most of Black's thirty five years as an archaeologist were spent as the Indiana Historical Society's director of archaeology and its only archaeologist on staff. Black traveled the state investigating and reporting on archaeological sites. The Nowlin Mound report included a history of the mound and details of excavation, including a description of its construction and artifacts. The team's investigations of the Walum Olum were rejected by other professionals at the time. Historians now consider the Walum Olum to be a hoax and believe that Constantine Samuel Rafinesque created the materials to support his assertion that North America's natives had European origins. Because of the controversies and criticisms surrounding the research team's conclusions, Black ended all subsequent investigations on the Walum Olum, but he continued with other ethnological research. The Indiana Historical Society bought the Angel site in 1938 with funding from Eli Lilly. Black thought that Angel Mounds would provide an opportunity to conduct a long term study of a single archaeological site. Black also operated a field training for student archaeologists at Angel Mounds from 1945 through the summer of 1962, although World War II temporarily halted excavation from 1941 to 1945. Further research and excavation at the site resumed in 1945 as part of the Indiana University Archaeology Field School. Control of Angel Mounds is transferred to the state of Indiana in 1946. Between 1958 and 1962, two National Science Foundation grants provided financial support to Black's efforts to apply geophysical applications to archaeological sites. Black and his student assistants tested a proton magnetometer's potential use in locating subsurface features at archaeological sites, extending the work begun by the University of Oxford's Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art. Black and his students traced segments of the palisade walls at Angel Mounds that were not visible from the surface. This project made Black among the first prehistorians to make "comprehensive tests in the Americas" to assess the proton magnetometer's potential on a New World site.

In 1934, Black became a founding member of the Society for American Archaeology and served as the organization's vice president (1939–1940), council member (1940–1941), president (1941–1942), and treasurer (1947–1951).

Black was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Wabash College in 1951, Black was seen as the only professional archaeologist practicing in Indiana until the 1960s. From 1963 64, Black and the site team completed excavation of the large mound, at the Angel site.

Black died on September 2, 1964, at Deaconess Hospital in Evansville, Indiana, after suffering a heart attack while excavating at Angel Mounds. According to James H. Kellar, Black was "the first professional archaeologist continuously involved in the study of Indiana's prehistoric past." Angel Mounds, the primary subject of Black's investigations, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. The Indiana Historical Society transferred its excavation rights at Angel Mounds to Indiana University in 1965; the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites is the present day manager of the site.