Alice Beck Kehoe facts for kids
Alice Beck Kehoe (born in 1934 in New York City) is a well-known anthropologist and archaeologist. She studies human societies and ancient cultures. She has spent a lot of time doing research with Native American communities in the US and Canada. Her work helps us understand their history and way of life. She has also written many books about anthropology and archaeology.
Learning and Discovery
Alice Kehoe went to Barnard College and then Harvard University. She earned her PhD in anthropology from Harvard. While she was a student, she worked during the summers at the American Museum of Natural History. There, she learned from important researchers like James Ford and Junius Bird. Later, at Harvard, she worked with Gordon Willey. Many of her ideas were also shaped by her colleagues, including David H. Kelley and Robert L. Hall.
Her Career and Research
Kehoe taught at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln before moving to Marquette University. She retired from Marquette in 2000 as a professor emeritus, which means she kept her title after retiring. She now lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She has also held important positions in groups like the American Anthropological Association (AAA). She was even president of the Central States Anthropological Society (CSAS).
Kehoe has studied many parts of Native American life and history. She believes there is a strong link between the ancient cultures of the southeastern U.S. (called the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex) and Mesoamerica (which includes Mexico and Central America). Her main interest is the archaeology and cultures of the northwestern plains of the U.S.
She has worked for many years with the Blackfeet people of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana. The Blackfeet are an Algonquian Native American group. She visits them every year to learn about their history and culture. She has also studied Native American spiritual healers, sometimes called "medicine people." She worked with Piakwutch, an older, respected Cree man from Saskatchewan. Kehoe also did research among Native Americans in Bolivia, near Lake Titicaca.
Throughout her career, Kehoe has sometimes held different or new ideas. She was one of the first people to support feminist archaeology. This field looks at how women were involved in ancient societies and how archaeologists study them. In 1990, she helped edit one of the first books on this topic, called Powers of Observation.
Kehoe also became interested in whether people from other parts of the world visited North America before Christopher Columbus. This led her to study the Kensington Runestone in Minnesota. This stone has strange carvings that some people believe are ancient Viking writings. While many experts think the stone is a fake from the 1800s, Alice Kehoe believes it might be real. She thinks it could be actual writing from Scandinavians who traveled to North America in the 1300s.
In 2016, the Plains Anthropological Association gave Kehoe a special award. It was for her "enduring work in Anthropology and Archaeology of the Great Plains." In 2022, she published a book about her own life called Girl Archaeologist: Sisterhood in a Sexist Profession. In this book, she shares her experiences as a woman working in archaeology.
Works
- Kehoe, Alice Beck (2017) North America Before the European Invasions. New York: Routledge. (This book is a newer edition of an earlier work she co-edited.)
