Elizabeth Ann Morris: Dishwasher, Digger, Instructor, Professor

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Liz Morris (1932–2012) grew up surrounded by artifacts and archaeologists as the daughter of Earl and Ann Axtell Morris, renowned Southwestern and Mesoamerican archaeologists. She launched her own archaeological career in 1951 when she attended field camp at Pine Lawn, NM, where dishwashing and cataloguing were her main duties. Following a University of Arizona MA (1957) and four summers at Point of Pines field school, where she served as the only female dig foreman, she became U of A’s first female anthropology PhD (1959). She discovered a love of teaching and, in 1970, became Colorado State University’s first female archaeologist. Liz’s “female firsts” mattered less to her, however, than her achievements as an archaeologist, educator, and mentor. She ran CSU’s field school for 15 years, conducted pioneering research, and trained now-influential archaeologists until her retirement in 1988 as a full professor. The flow of her career demonstrates women’s increased acceptance in the profession from the mid-twentieth century onward.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Female Firsts: Celebrating Archaeology’s Pioneering Women on the 101st Anniversary of the 19th Amendment

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32610