Bonnie Pitblado is the Robert E. and Virginia Bell Professor of Anthropological Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma and Executive Director of the Oklahoma Public Archaeology Network (OKPAN). Bonnie completed her PhD in 1999 at the University of Arizona, writing a dissertation focused on the earliest human occupation of the Rocky Mountains. Because so little was known of the subject at the time, she worked closely with artifact collectors to enhance a study sample that would otherwise have been insufficiently robust to support her research direction. These two subjects–the earliest peopling of the Rockies and collaboration with private collectors–have been her career passions ever since. Her most recent research has demonstrated that the peopling of the Rocky Mountains occurred much earlier than previously thought, and a Society for American Archaeology task force she chaired in 2016 prepared, at the Society’s request, a statement for the organization defining appropriate archaeologist-collector collaboration.
Publications focused on archaeologist-collector collaboration:
Pitblado, Bonnie and Michael J. Shott (Guest Editors), 2015: Pros and Cons of Consulting Collectors. The SAA Archaeological Record 15(5). Includes contributions by the co-editors; Joe Watkins; Jim Cox; Robert Connelly; Lynn E. Fisher, Susan K. Harris, Rainer Schreg, and Corina Knipper;Ted Goebel; and S. Terry Childs.
Pitblado, B.L., 2014: How Archaeologists and Artifact Collectors Can—and Should—Collaborate to Comply with Legal and Ethical Antiquities Codes. Advances in Archaeological Practice 2(4): 338-352.
Pitblado, B., 2014: An Argument for Ethical, Proactive, Archaeologist – Artifact Collector Collaboration. American Antiquity 79(3):385-400.
Other information
Bonnie’s Academia.edu page