Ruth DeEtte Simpson, also known as Dee Simpson, was born in Los Angeles, California on May 6, 1918. She received her Bachelors Degree from the University of Southern California in 1941 then returned for her Masters Degree, which she finished in 1944. Just after receiving her Masters Degree, Simpson became Curator of the Heard Museum in Arizona for two years. She then went to the Southwest Museum in California to work as the Associate Curator. Simpson worked at the museum from 1946 until 1964. In 1964, Simpson went to work as the County Archeologist in the San Bernardino County Museum.
While working as County Archeologist, Simpson worked on the Calico Site, which was found in 1942 on the shore of a Pleistocene lake named Lake Manix. When Simpson started the excavation of the site she managed to bring Louis Leakey into the project as Director. The Calico Site was a very significant site in that it was dated to about 200,000 years ago by Uranium-thorium dating. The reason that the significance of the Calico site was questioned is that there is still a debate as to whether the debris on the site were man-made. Indeed, if the site is man-made, it shows that humans were in the New World much earlier than the currently accepted estimate. The photograph below is of artifacts from the Calico Site.
There is very little current information on Simpson. She was a
member of the American Anthropologist Association and the Society of American
Archaeology. Simpson’s major studies have been in the area of human
occupation of North America, such as at the Calico Site the relationships
between the early cultures of the California desert and the coast, as well as
the relationships between early humans and their environment. She died on
January 19, 2000.
Bowker, RR. American Men and Women of Science, Company New York and London, 1976.
Written by students in an Introduction to Anthropology course at MSU-Mankato