Charles Malcolm Watkins

C. Malcolm Watkins (Charles Malcolm Watkins, 1911–2001) was an American historian, archaeologist, and museum curator. Born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1911, he graduated from Harvard University in 1934 and worked at the Smithsonian Institution for more than thirty years, serving as the first head of the Department of Cultural History at the National Museum of History and Technology. He was a pioneer of material culture studies and historical archaeology. Three of his works are held here, all centered on the material culture and local history of colonial North America: North Devon Pottery and Its Export to America in the 17th Century examines the trade and wares of seventeenth-century North Devon pottery shipped to America; The Cultural History of Marlborough, Virginia traces local cultural history through the case of Marlborough, Virginia; and there is also Smithsonian Institution – United States National Museum – Bulletin 249. His writing is distinguished by the mutual corroboration of objects and archives, attending to the origins, circulation, and everyday uses of artifacts, and it helped lay the methodological foundation of American historical archaeology.