Alice Beck Kehoe

Alice Beck Kehoe (born 1934, New York City) is an anthropologist. She attended Barnard College and Harvard University, from which she received her PhD in Anthropology. While a student at Barnard, she was influenced by James Ford, Gordon Ekholm, and Junius Bird; she worked summers at the American Museum of Natural History Anthropology Department. While at Harvard, she worked with Gordon Willey and Evon Vogt. Many of her influences have been colleagues such as David H. Kelley, Jane Kelley, Jennifer Brown, Robert L. Hall, George F. Carter and his students Stephen C. Jett and Carl Johannesen.

Kehoe taught at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln before teaching at Marquette University, from which she retired in 2000 as Professor Emeritus. She currently resides in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Kehoe has held offices with the American Anthropological Association (AAA), and was president of the Central States Anthropological Society (CSAS). She has done research in the field and has authored several books on Native America and Native American history.

About

Kehoe has studied many aspects of Native America and is a strong believer in the theoretical link between the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC) (of the Native southeastern U.S.) and Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America). Her principal area of interest is the archaeology and cultures of the northwestern plains of the U.S. While searching for an ethnographic research topic for her dissertation, she happened upon the Saskatchewan Dakota New Tidings Ghost Dance. Kehoe has worked many years with the Blackfoot or Niitsitapi Nation, an Algonquian Native American group of Browning, Montana, with whom she visits each year to study their history and culture. She has studied Native American spiritual healers ("medicine people") and worked with Piakwutch, "an elderly deeply respected Cree man who served his Saskatchewan Cree community...".^[1]^:60 She has also worked among Native Americans of Bolivia at Lake Titicaca, where she chewed coca leaves with Native women of the region.^[1]^:70 Her interest in pre-Columbian transoceanic contacts led to her meeting Richard Nielsen, who asked her to advise on archeological aspects while testing the Kensington Runestone of Minnesota, which Kehoe is satisfied was indeed not a 19th-century hoax but rather actual runic writing by members of a Scandinavian voyage to North America in the 14th century.

The Kensington Runestone convinced Kehoe of a different North American history than what we've been taught for decades. She states:

It has been conventional to treat American history as if it were identical with United States history. Such a myopic view cuts students off from the context in which the United States developed, a larger history that will not go away. America's history begins some fourteen thousand years ago ... Invading Europeans met no wilderness, but landscapes and resources rendered through millennia of human actions."^[2]^:1

In her many years of teaching and writing, Kehoe has emphasized the importance of critical thinking in looking at anthropology, archaeology, and history, particularly as it pertains to Native America. She speaks of the "limited and biased archaeological record" (2007:personal communication) of the Americas and of how many archaeologists were molded by preconceptions of ancient Amerindians having been "savage" or "primitive" and incapable of having "real" civilizations in European terms. Kehoe minces few words in her distaste for such tunnel-visioned attitudes, stating, for example, "...the massive mounds of the Midwest, most of them larger than any prehistoric mounds in Europe, could not be accommodated in a scenario of virgin wilderness inhabited by Men-Brutes..."^[3]^:164 and "The history of American archaeology ... is a remarkable example of post-hoc objectification of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. From its inception, American archaeology has been politically charged, legitimating domination of North America by capitalists imbued with British bourgeois culture".^[3]^:xi

Bibliography

Kehoe has authored and coauthored a number of books, some meant to be used as undergraduate texts, others as scholarly contributions:

Traveling Prehistoric Seas: Critical Thinking on Ancient Transoceanic Voyages. December 2015, Left Coast Press, ISBN 978-1-62958-067-8.

Kehoe, Alice (1 May 2014). A Passion for the True and Just: Felix and Lucy Kramer Cohen and the Indian New Deal. University of Arizona Press. ISBN 978-0816530939.
Wissler, Clark; Kehoe, Alice Beck; Miller, Stewart E. (17 August 2012). Amskapi Pikuni: The Blackfeet People. State Univ of New York Press. ISBN 978-1438443355.
Kehoe, Alice Beck (27 November 2012). Militant Christianity: An Anthropological History. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1137282149.
Kehoe, Alice Beck (30 April 2008). Controversies in Archaelogy. Left Coast Press. ISBN 978-1598740615.
Kehoe, Alice Beck; Pleger, Thomas C. (4 January 2007). Archaeology: A Consise Introduction. Waveland Press. ISBN 978-1577664505.
Kehoe, Alice Beck (15 June 2006). The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization. Waveland Press. ISBN 978-1577664536.
Kehoe, Alice Beck (15 December 2004). The Kensington Runestone: Approaching a Research Question Holistically. Waveland Press. ISBN 978-1577663713.
Kehoe, Alice B. (12 September 2005). North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account (3rd ed.). Pearson. ISBN 978-0131928763.
Kehoe, Alice Beck (7 August 2002). America Before the European Invasions. Routledge. ISBN 978-0582414860.
Sterk, Helen M.; Hay, Carla H.; Kehoe, Alice B.; Ratcliffe, Krista; VendeVusse, Leona G. (31 March 2002). Who's Having this Baby? Perspectives on Birthing. Michigan State University Press. ISBN 978-0870136153.
Kehoe, Alice Beck (1 September 2000). Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking. Waveland Press. ISBN 978-1577661627.
Kehoe, Alice Beck; Emmerichs, Mary Beth (November 1999). Assembling the Past: Studies in the Professionalization of Archaeology. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 978-0826319395.
Kehoe, Alice Beck (27 August 1998). The Land of Prehistory: A Critical History of American Archaeology. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415920544.
Kehoe, Alice Beck (20 May 1998). Humans: An Introduction to Four-Field Anthropology. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415919845.

References

1 2 Kehoe, Alice Beck (1 September 2000). Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking. Waveland Press. ISBN 978-1577661627.
↑ Kehoe, Alice Beck (7 August 2002). America Before the European Invasions. Routledge. ISBN 978-0582414860.
1 2 Kehoe, Alice Beck (27 August 1998). The Land of Prehistory: A Critical History of American Archaeology. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415920544.

External links

Biographical sketch of Alice Beck Kehoe at the Scientific American website (December 16, 2008)

Authority control	WorldCat Identities VIAF: 112603590 ISNI: 0000 0001 0936 6453 SUDOC: 03543709X BNF: cb13481722d (data)

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