Betty Meggers

1921 -

Betty Jane Meggers was born on December 5, 1921 to William and Edith Meggers in Washington D.C. She went to school at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated with her Bachelors Degree in 1943. One year later she got her Masters Degree from the University of Michigan. Prior to getting her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1952, Betty married an archeology curator named Clifford Evans on September 13, 1946. Her dissertation entitled The Archeological Sequence on Marajo Island, Brazil, with Special Reference to the Marajoara Culture is indicative of her interest and contributions in South American archeology.

Betty's career has been a full one. Her field research has been concentrated in South America. She has done research in the area of the Amazon, along the Andes, Guyana, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru and Chile. She is currently the principal investigator of the Programa Nacional de Pesquisas Arqueologicas na Bacia Amazonica (PRONAPABA.) Outside of South America, she has done research in the Lesser Antilles and Micronesia. Meggers has published numerous works on pre-Columbian transpacific contact and cultural ecology.

She worked as an Instructor for the American University in Washington D.C. from 1950-1951. She was Executive Secretary of the American Anthropological Association from 1959 to 1961, and from 1961-1963 she was an administrator for the Visiting Lecturer Program with the American Anthropological Association and the National Science Foundation. She was also a Consultant for Battelle Memorial Foundation. Since 1954, Betty has been a Research Associate for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and in 1981 she became an Expert for the Smithsonian Institution.

Betty Meggers has also been a member of many professional organizations, holding elective and appointed positions in leadership and journal editorial areas. Among the numerous organizations she has been involved in, she has been the Treasurer, Vice-President and President of the Anthropological Association of Washington. She has been involved with the Society for American Archeology and the American Anthropological Association. She has been an advisor numerous times, including advising for the Rockefeller Foundation. She has also belonged to various Latin American organizations, such as the Instituto de Arqueologia Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro, and a member of the advisory board for the Boletín del Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, in both of which she is still involved. Other organizations that she is currently involved in include the Walter Roth Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, and the Handbook of Latin American Studies, Hispanic Division for the Library of Congress.

Meggers has received awards from many countries, including Latin American countries. Among the awards and honors she has received are the Washington Academy of Sciences Award for Scientific Achievement in 1956, the Decoration of Merit from the Government of Ecuador in 1966 and the 37th International Congress of Americanists Gold Medal in 1966. She was awarded the Society for American Archaeology, 50th Anniversary Award in 1985. In 1998, she and her husband Clifford Evans were awarded for "their contribution to our National Identity" by the Embassy of Ecuador, Washington D.C. Other recent awards are the Medalla de "La Periquera" from the Museo Provincial de Holguín, Cuba and a Doctor Honoris Causa from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina both of which she received in 1997.