Professor Patty Jo Watson, an internationally known archaeologist from Washington University in St. Louis, will give a free public lecture at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Feb. 25.
Watson will present the 2000 Distinguished Archaeology lecture titled "Cave Archaeology in North America." Sponsored by the CU-Boulder anthropology department and funded by a department alumnus, the talk will be held at 8 p.m. in room 270 of the Hale Science Building.
Watson will talk about her research in the deep interior of caves in the eastern United States, including evidence she has uncovered revealing the activities of prehistoric people in the innermost recesses of the Earth thousands of years ago. Watson believes the dark interior of caves became part of the cosmology of ancient American Indian peoples.
A member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Watson began her cave research in the early 1960s in Salts Cave, Ky., which is a portion of the world聮s longest cave system in Mammoth Cave National Park. She eventually developed the Salts Cave work into a long-term research project on agricultural origins in eastern North America.
Watson also studies rock shelters and large shell mounds related to early human habitation in Kentucky and Tennessee, and has helped direct archaeological field projects in New Mexico and Arizona.
In addition to her U.S. research efforts, Watson has done archaeological survey, excavation and ethnoarchaeology studies in the Near East and Far East, participating in field projects in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and China.
Her work has focused on prehistoric food-producing communities and the origins of agriculture and pastoralism in Western Asia about 10,000 years ago. She returns to the Near East occasionally for research and lecture tours.
Watson, who obtained her doctoral degree from the University of Chicago in 1959, is the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of Archaeology at Washington University. She teaches courses ranging from introduction to archaeology and Near East archaeology to Eastern Woodlands archaeology and Southwestern U.S. prehistory.
She also is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the Cave Research Foundation and Honorary Life Member of the National Speleological Society. Watson received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Anthropological Association in 1996 and the Distinguished Archaeological Achievement Award from the Archaeological Institute of America in 1999.