Robert Fleming Heizer was an archaeologist who conducted extensive fieldwork and reporting in California, the southwest, and the Great Basin
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Robert Fleming Heizer was born July 13, 1915 in Denver, Colorado to Ott and Martha Madden Heizer, He spent most of his childhood in Lovelock, Nevada where he began a lifelong love affair with the cultures of Native Americans As a young boy he collected artifacts in around where he lived. He wenton his first excavation when he was in college at the Sacramento Junior College in the early 1930s.[1] He graduated from Lovelock High School in 1932 with a very small class of eleven students. He wanted to attend the University of California at Berkeley, but was unable to do so because some of the requirements were not offered by Lovelock High. He enrolled in Sacramento Junior College in the fall of 1932. When Heizer was at registration for school a faculty member heard that he was interested in archaeology and took him out of line to meet with the president of the college, Jeremiah Beverley Lilliard, who had interest in archaeology. Heizer became aprotégée of Lilliard during his time at Sacramento Junior College. After two years Heizer then went on to finish his degree at the University of California at Berkeley. He graduated with high honors with a B.A. degree in 1936. There was little interest in local archaeology at Berkeley at that time and Heizer dug with the only graduate student at the time, Waldo Wedel.[2] He also participated in fieldwork with Alex Krieger and other scholars in Nevada with financial help from Francesca Blackmer Wigg.[3] While in graduate school Heizer worked with many professors including Alfred L. Kroeber, who had Heizer write his dissertation on aboriginal whaling in the Old and New World. In 1941 Heizer received his doctorate from Berkeley. In 1940, he married Nancy Elizabeth Jenkins. During their marriage they had three children; two sons names Stephen and Michael and one daughter, Sydney. Heizer and Nancy were divorced in 1975.[4]
Upon receiving his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, Heizer worked one year at the University of Oregon. When WWII started, he worked for four years and four months at the Richmond Kaiser Shipyard in California as a marine pipe fitter. After the war ended he taught at the University of California in Los Angeles for one year from 1945-1946. After this one year stint he began his thirty year career at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1946 he started as an assistant professor in archaeology. He was promoted to associate professor in 1948 and to a full on professor in 1952. While teaching he worked closely with both undergraduates and graduates, who helped inspirethe first version of A Guide to Field Methods in Archaeology published in 1949, and The Archaeologists at Work published in 1959. While teaching he also organized and directed the University of California Archaeological Survey from 1948 until it ended in 1960. The organization conducted many major excavations and various field studies in the state of California. The research produced 75 volumes in its Reports series. Heizer officially retired from teaching in 1979 the year that he died.[4]
Heizer received many awards and honors during his lifetime. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Sciences from the University of Nevada in 1965; two Guggenheim fellowships in 1963 and 1973; a year as a fellow in the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science from 1972–1973; an award for having distinguished scholarly contributions from the Southwestern Anthropological Association in 1976; awarded the Henry R. Wagner Medal of the California Historical Society in 1977; and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973.[4]
Heizer’s excavations included the Cooper-Molera Adobe Project in Monterey County California from 1971–1978[5] He did work in the Sacramento Valley from 1936–1939,[5] and in later years at Lovelock Cave, Humboldt Cave, and Eastgate Cave, all in Nevada.[6] His primary area of study was the Great Basin of the United States. Heizer decided early on that more was going on in the west 10,000 years ago, although in the 1950s and 1960s it was widely accepted that there was not much going on.[1] He had never traveled out of the United States until he went to Tabasco to work at the La Venta site in 1955examiningthe Olmec society with his college Phillip Drucker, who had contacted him up about his findings there.[7] There they found large stone monuments in the shapes of faces and statues. They also uncovered a shrine that was buried on purpose because of its sacredness. One of his lesser known, but highly important studies was the continuation of the work of C. Hart Merriam. Merriam spent a great deal of his life doing fieldwork on the Native Americans of California. After his death Merriam’s family donated all his materials to the Anthropology Department at the University of California at Berkeley where Heizer and Kroeber took over the studies. Heizer had over 1,000 of Merriam’s articles published so others could learn from them.[1]
Most of Heizer’s research was in prehistoric and historic Native American peoples of the western United States, particularly in Nevada and California. He conducted numerous analyses of preserved materials from the caves in Nevada, particularly fossil feces, which helped determine what the human diet consisted of and dietary changes over time. Heizer also helped lay the groundwork for scientific applications in archaeology. This research included involvement with 1radiocarbon dating during the 1950s, and trace elements analysis of obsidian artifacts in the 1960s and 1970s.[4] He was never one to focus exclusively on theory, but was interested in discovering basic facts and methods in research areas of interest.[1] Heizer also used neuron activation analysis to determine trace elements on samples from his excavations in Mexico, one of the applications of this method. He then used the same idea when he tested petroglyphs.[1]
Heizer wrote hundreds of different works in the course of his lifetime. He wrote 415 papers, reprinted papers, reports and prefaces. He also wrote 30 books (authored and co-authors) and 53 different book reviews, and was a part of 2 films.[4]
Heizer died July 18, 1979. He was first put in the hospital in 1978 for cancer, but his health had been declining for several months before. He fought hard against the disease and despite the handicaps it put on him he continued to teach and conduct research up until a few days before his death.[4]