The Correspondence, 1930-1975 series (25 linear feet) contains Griffin's incoming and outgoing personal and professional correspondence during the most active years of his professional career. The series is incredibly rich as Griffin corresponded with nearly all of the prominent figures in North American archaeology of his time. The series includes not only letters, postcards, and telegrams, but also drafts of articles, reports from field sites, maps, and photographs of people and objects (more comprehensive documentation on particular archaeological sites, photographs, and extensive publication files can be elsewhere in the papers). The series is arranged alphabetically by correspondent, with any supplemental material from a particular correspondent filed together with his or her letters. While most of the correspondence, including all with regular correspondents, is arranged in individual folders by the name of the correspondent, correspondence with infrequent correspondents and some routine correspondence is collected alphabetically in the "Miscellaneous" folders at the end of each letter range.
The series represents all phases of Griffin's pre-retirement professional career. Early correspondence includes letters to and from Griffin's mentors, most notably Fay-Cooper Cole and Carl Guthe. Later correspondence shows Griffin as a mentor and advisor himself, to students and junior colleagues including Gregory Perino, Stephen Williams, Jeffrey Parsons, Wesley Hurt, Clifford Evans, Betty Meggers, and Dan Morse. Correspondence with Griffin's contemporaries figures prominently throughout the series, and provides insight into his long-term associations with Irving Rouse, J.O. Brew, Emil Haury, Gordon Willey, Charles Fairbanks, Philip Phillips, Richard MacNeish, Jesse Jennings, and Fred Eggan, among many others. Griffin's correspondents spanned all of North America, and included Mexican archaeologists such as Eduardo Noguera, Pedro Armillas, and Ignacio Marquina, and Canadians such as William E. Taylor and J. Norman Emerson.
Correspondence with Griffin's University of Michigan colleagues, including museum curators and administrators Carl Guthe, Albert Spaulding, Kamer Aga-Oglu, Richard Ford, and Volney Jones, and Department of Anthropology heads Leslie White and J.N. Spuhler, is well represented in the series. The Museum's evolving status at the University of Michigan can be seen in discussions with university administrators such as College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LS&A) deans Alfred Sussman, Ralph Sawyer, and William Haber, and executive officers such as Secretary of the University Herbert Watkins and Assistant to the President Erich Walter. Correspondence from Griffin to his secretary at the museum during his leave year in London from 1953-1954 and during a summer project in 1952 provides insight into his activities while away from the museum, as other museum curators' correspondence to him from the field provides insight into theirs.
Griffin's correspondence documents not only individual personalities and research in North American archaeology, but also broader themes in the field. Griffin's extensive correspondence with his early patron Eli Lilly, and proposals to major sources of funding for anthropology, including the Wenner-Gren Foundation (as found particularly in the correspondence with Paul Fejos) and the National Science Foundation, demonstrate the crucial role outside financial support played in the development of the archaeological field. While Griffin corresponded regularly with a number of amateur archaeologists and received volumes of inquiries from avocationalists throughout his career, like many of his academic peers, he was also very concerned with the professionalization of archaeology. Griffin was one of the original 31 signers of the constitution of the Society for American Archaeology and served as an officer from 1945 to 1956 (including a term as president in 1951), and his correspondence with fellow officers and members demonstrates the growth of this important professional association.
While most notable for its documentation of the field of North American archaeology, the Correspondence, 1930-1975 series also contains materials that illustrate and provide insight into key events and trends in American history. Correspondence from the 1930s includes letters from a number of people working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a key source of funding for North American archaeology in its formative years. Parallels with the early Cold War crusades of the House Un-American Activities Committee can be seen in the case of James Griffin's friend, Richard G. Morgan, who was fired from the Ohio State Museum (and effectively exiled from the academic field of anthropology) in 1948 for his purported ties to the Communist Party. Correspondence from this time period between Griffin and Morgan, as well as with John W. Bennett and Fay-Cooper Cole, provides insight into the specifics of the case and the American Anthropological Association's (AAA) intervention on Morgan's behalf.
