Before Salt Lake City there was Nauvoo, Illinois, home to the fledgling Mormon Church from 1839 to 1846. Founder Joseph Smith selected the site on the east bank of the Mississippi River after being driven there from Missouri, and at its peak Nauvoo had some 12,000 inhabitants, the same number as Chicago. But the unconventional practices of the new church drew strong opposition in Illinois as well, and Smith was murdered in 1844 in a jail in nearby Carthage. Led by Brigham Young, most of the Mormons left Illinois for Utah and in a few years the once thriving city was virtually deserted.
Excavating Nauvoo tells the fascinating story of the excavation and restoration of the 19th-century city. The Nauvoo archaeological project was headed by J.C. Harrington, considered to be the father of historical archaeology, who made his reputation at Colonial Jamestown. The project lasted from 1961 to 1984 and parallels the development of the now well-established discipline of historical archaeology. Funded by the Utah church, the project quickly became a source of dispute between the two main branches of Mormonism – the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Utah LDS) and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS), which consisted primarily of descendants of Mormons who did not follow Brigham Young to Utah. The project is important for non-Mormons as well since Nauvoo is representative of frontier towns of the era, and it was largely undisturbed by continuous development and change.
Author Benjamin Pykles, an archaeologist at SUNY-Potsdam, has produced a detailed and readable study of all aspects of the Nauvoo project and its role in the development of historical archaeology. The competing approaches and philosophies of the Utah LDS and the RLDS add interest and controversy to the story. Today, visitors to Nauvoo get to enjoy an authentically restored frontier town, made so with the wise use of historical archaeology. Along with the history of the Mormon Church, they also receive an ample dose of LDS proselytizing and a competing view from the RLDS.