Патти Джо Уотсон: Америкалық археолог және ежелгі өркениеттерді зерттеуші

American archaeologist
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Patty Jo Watson (born 1932) is an American archaeologist noted for her work on Pre Columbian Native Americans, especially in the Mammoth Cave region of Kentucky. Her early investigations focused on the origins of agriculture and pastoralism in the Near East. She is now Distinguished University Professor Emerita, Archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis. Until her retirement in 2004, she was the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of Archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis.

In 1952, Watson, a junior at Iowa State, transferred into a three year master's program at the University of Chicago. Later from 1954 to 1955, Watson participated in the Iraq Jarmo Project in Northern Iraq as a field assistant to Robert Braidwood.

Watson devoted much of her early career to the archaeological study of the Ancient Near East. In addition, Watson has been instrumental in applying ethnography to the archaeological record. In the 1960s in Mammoth Cave, she introduced the practice of performing recreations of ancient lifeways as a method of filling in gaps from incomplete archaeological data. "She has contributed centrally to techniques for recovering carbonized plant remains from archaeological deposits and to understanding the independent origin of pre maize agriculture in pre Columbian eastern North America." The article credited Watson with "establishing the best qualitative and quantitative data for an early agricultural complex in North America" and with helping to "introduce the scientific method into archaeological studies." The Southeastern Archaeological Conference gives an award in her name.