David Hurst Thomas (born 1945) is the curator of North American Archaeology in the Division of Anthropology at the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 int ...

and a professor at Richard Gilder Graduate School. He was previously a chairman of the American Museum of Natural History's Anthropology Division.

Career

Thomas was born and raised in California, and after initially wanting to major in pre-med, ended up receiving all of his degrees in anthropology (including a Ph.D. in 1971) from the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institu ...

instead. He is one of the founding trustees for the

National Museum of the American Indian The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum in the United States devoted to the culture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums and research centers. The museum has three ...

at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Found ...

, was elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Na ...

in 1989, and received the Presidential Recognition Award from the

Society for American Archaeology The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) is a professional association for the archaeology of the Americas. It was founded in 1934 and its headquarters are in based in Washington, D.C. , it has 7,500 members. Its current president is Deborah L. ...

. During his 35-year tenure at the AMNH, Thomas has published dozens of books, ranging from technical site reports to widely used popular textbooks and has been involved in archaeological fieldwork throughout North America. His best known projects include excavations at the Gatecliff Rockshelter in Nevada, which is the deepest stratified rockshelter in North America; on St. Catherines Island in

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

, where he discovered the site of the Franciscan mission

Santa Catalina de Guale Santa Catalina de Guale (1602-1702) was a Spanish Franciscan mission and town in Spanish Florida. Part of Spain's effort to convert the Native Americans to Catholicism, Santa Catalina served as the provincial headquarters of the Guale mission pr ...

; and the Spanish mission south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thomas's academic research is varied, with concentrations on the human response to environmental change in the Great Basin, as well as the consequences of Spanish exploration and colonization of the South on indigenous people in the region. One of Thomas's main foci is the relationship between Native American and anthropological communities. He has written extensively about the lawsuit against the federal government that prevented the

repatriation Repatriation is the process of returning a thing or a person to its country of origin or citizenship. The term may refer to non-human entities, such as converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country, as well as to the pro ...

of the

Kennewick Man Kennewick Man and Ancient One are the names generally given to the skeletal remains of a prehistoric Paleoamerican man found on a bank of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, on July 28, 1996. It is one of the most complete ancient sk ...

remains and has worked to support positive relationships between the scientific and native communities in North America. He believes that if better working relationships had been established before and during the Kennewick case, both sides could have come to an agreement without taking it to the level of the federal courts. Thomas is a major supporter of

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub. L. 101-601, 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq., 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law enacted on November 16, 1990. The Act requires federal agencies and institutions that ...

(NAGPRA) and is sympathetic to Native American rights. The NAGPRA is legislation passed in November 1990 recognizing that Native American people have a special stake in the history of this country, and that museums have acquired items that are inappropriate (human remains, grave goods, items of cultural patrimony), that tribes need to be notified by museums with these items in their collections, and that decisions have to be made by both sides about repatriation. The law also applies to new finds, so that there are rules that apply to federal/state/Indian lands where artifacts are found as well. Thomas is also known as an educator and proponent of public involvement in archaeology. In addition to the many textbooks that he has written or co-authored, he is also actively involved in public outreach through the AMNH, and has helped produce a children's television show, called DIGS, that introduces kids (and their parents) to the discipline of archaeology in an easy to understand, fun, “hands-on” way. He has held several university positions and he has also made a major contribution to the field (and managed to start his own academic lineage) by acting as a mentor to one of the current top names in hunter-gatherer archaeology. Robert Kelly, who worked as a volunteer with Thomas at Gatecliff Rockshelter as a teenager, has published numerous books and articles, has been voted president of the

, is currently head of the Anthropology Department at the

University of Wyoming The University of Wyoming (UW) is a public land-grant research university in Laramie, Wyoming. It was founded in March 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state, and opened in September 1887. The University of Wyoming ...

, and has mentored dozens of students himself in a relatively short period of time.

Published works

*''Archaeology, 6th edition'' (2013) *''St. Catherines: An Island in Time'' (2011, 1988) *''Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity'' (2001, 2000) *''Exploring Ancient Native America: An Archaeological Guide'' (1994) *''Native North America'' (2000)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, David Hurst American archaeologists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Living people People associated with the American Museum of Natural History University of California, Davis alumni 1945 births

Career

Published works

See also

References