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{{Short description|Discoverer of Henry David Thoreau's house at Walden Pond}}
'''Roland Wells Robbins''' (1908–1987) was an American archaeologist, author, and historian who is known for discovering the site of [[Henry David Thoreau]]'s house at [[Walden Pond]]. His other discoveries include the [[Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site|Saugus Iron Works]] and the [[John and Priscilla Alden Family Sites]].
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==Archaeology==
===Thoreau site===
On July 4, 1945, the 100th anniversary of Henry David Thoreau's first day at Walden Pond, Robbins decided to look for the site of Thoreau's cabin. He used ''[[Walden]]'' and notes on the house by [[William Ellery Channing]] as a reference.<ref name="Accident" /> On November 12, 1945, he located the chimney foundations of Thoreau's house in [[Concord, Massachusetts]]. He began lecturing on his discovery and documented it in his book ''Discovery at Walden''. In 1964, Robbins reproduced Thoreau's cabin in his backyard and opened the building to the public.<ref>{{cite book|last=Sullivan|first=Mark W.|title=Picturing Thoreau: Henry David Thoreau in American Visual Culture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LjzaBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA69
===Saugus Iron Works===
In September 1948, First Iron Works Association president J. Sanger Attwill approached Robbins about trying to find the site of the Iron Works. Robbins was interested in the idea of digging at a site that was over three hundred years old, the challenge of working on a site where there little information, including no plans or sketches, and the opportunity to work at what may have been the first iron-manufacturing plant in the American colonies.<ref name=Robbins>{{cite book|last1=Robbins|first1=Roland Wells|last2=Jones|first2=Evan|title=Hidden America|url=https://archive.org/details/hiddenamerica00robb|url-access=registration|year=1959|publisher=Knopf}}</ref> Robbins' excavations uncovered the major manufacturing units of the Iron Works, including the foundations of buildings, remains of the blast furnace, holding ponds, and canal, a 500-pound hammer used in the forge, and a waterwheel that powered the bellows for the blast furnace, along with its wheel pit.<ref name=Linebaugh>{{cite
===Other work===
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[[Category:1908 births]]
[[Category:1987 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Lincoln, Massachusetts]]
[[Category:People from Worcester, Massachusetts]]
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