Society Activities

Annual Meeting

Annual Meeting 2008

Welcome to Lubbock for the
79th Texas Archeological Society Annual Meeting

Jane Holden Kelley Featured Speaker

Jane Holden Kelley, distinguished archeologist and daughter of TAS co-founder William Curry Holden, will headline the TAS Annual Meeting Banquet.

The Legacy of Curry Holden, who is seen in this photo (right) with physical anthropologist Carl Seltzer on the 1934 Yaqui expedition, will be the topic of Dr. Kelley’s talk.

Dr. Jane Holden Kelley, Professor Emerita of Archaeology at the University of Calgary, is the featured banquet speaker for the 2008 Texas Archeological Society Annual Meeting.  The banquet will be Saturday, October 25, 2008, at 7:00 p.m.  Dr. Kelley, daughter of TAS co-founder and pioneer in Texas archeology, Dr. William Curry Holden, will take a look back at the important role her father played in the development of professional archaeology in Texas.  Her talk is titled, “The Legacy of Curry Holden: TAS Co-founder and Texas Tech’s Renaissance Man.”

Dr. Kelley is herself an accomplished archaeologist.  She earned her B.A. in history from Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University) in 1949, and went on to The University of Texas at Austin (UT), where she received her M.A. in anthropology in 1951, completing her thesis on the Bonnell site near Ruidoso, New Mexico.  Later, she wrote her dissertation at Harvard University on the archaeology of the Sierra Blanca Region of Southeastern New Mexico, graduating with her Ph.D. in 1966.

Dr. Kelley has worked in New Mexico, El Salvador, and Chihuahua, and is currently involved in a 3-year grant-funded project in Chihuahua investigating the pithouse phase (or the Viejo period).  She has published several books, including two on Yaqui life histories, a project she first worked on with her father; a monograph on Cihuatan; and the Archaeology and Methodology of Science, with philosopher Marsha Hanen.  Dr. Kelley’s numerous journal articles cover a diverse range of topics such as gender, Yaqui law, and the politics of archaeology.  She has been published in The Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society, American Antiquity, Latin American Antiquity, Kiva, and Current Anthropology, to name a few.  She is past treasurer of the Society for American Archaeology, and recently presented a paper on Chihuahua and served as a discussant in another session at the 73rd Annual Meeting of the SAA in Vancouver in March of this year.

Although her career has taken her far from her West Texas roots, Dr. Kelley has generously volunteered to return home and offer her unique insight into the accomplishments of her father, one of the pioneers of Texas archeology.  Her banquet speech promises to be the highlight of the 2008 Annual Meeting.