Patty Jo Watson was born in 1932. She received her PhD. from the University of Chicago in 1959. Watson is apart of the Anthropology Department at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where she serves as an Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor, specializing in archaeology. Dr. Watson started her career by participating in surveying and excavations in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. In these locations, Watson studied Near Eastern prehistory under the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. During the 1960's and 1970's, she focused on the prehistoric subsistence, technology, and economy of the Eastern United States. Her fieldwork in the Lower Salts Cave, within the Mammoth Cave system, led to alternative conclusions about maize horticulture and the cultural revolution of the Early Woodland period.
During her work in the Lower Salts Cave region, Watson concluded that the region's inhabitants had made extensive use of vegetable materials and had actively participated in the emergence of the cultivation of maize (Watson, 76). Along with Mary Kennedy, she recognized the significance of this new crop and helped to develop a new method of archaeological interpretation. Together they point out that because maize was not native to the Eastern Woodlands, it required active care and tending. A deliberate decision to include and encourage this crop, rather than simply a passive or accidental acceptance of a new cultigen (Ashmore and Sharer, 213).
This model of interpretation, known as processual archaeology, approaches a cultural change as a function of cultural revolution, in this case Woodland people's acquisition of a new cultigen. Processual archaeologists attempt to determine the sources of these changes through time and apply these cross-culturally, relying on ecological and material perspectives of cultural activity. These perspectives use both descriptive and explanatory models in their interpretations. The relationship between this explanatory model and discussions of cultural change in the processual approach was of great significance to Watson in her field methodology. One of her greatest contributions to archaeology was furthering the cause of the processual approach in the scientific method:
"If we agree that explanation means implicitly or explicitly showing how particular events and processes are covered by general theories and laws, then we must agree on how to test and confirm or disconfirm these theories and laws. Once we do this we can proceed to use the archaeological record to understand the processual aspects of human behavior, and to interpret culture and cultural processes" (Le Blanc, Redman, Watson, 275).
Dr. Watson continues to teach at Washington University and continues her work in the Mammoth Cave system of Kentucky. According to her home page, she has been increasingly interested in a new approach involving the idea of post-processual archaeology, which is currently still in the developmental stage.
Watson, Patty Jo et al. 1969. The Prehistoric Salts Cave, Kentucky. Report of Investigations, No. 16. Springfield: Illinois State Museum.
Watson, Patty Jo ed. 1974. Archaeology of the Mammoth Cave Area. New York: Academic Press
Watson, Patty Jo, Steven A. Le Blanc and Charles Redman. 1984. Archaeological Explanation: The Scientific Method in Archaeology. New York: Columbia University Press.
Written By Minnesota State University Student
Edited By Lindsey Alston, 2007