Bertha “Birdie” Parker
- @womxninSTEM
- Aug 30, 2019
- 1 min read
Bertha “Birdie” Parker
Aug. 30, 1907 - Oct. 8, 1978
Native American Archaeologist
Bertha Parker was one of the first Native American female archaeologists.
Born in Chautauqua County, New York, Parker grew up assisting her father, the first president of the Society for American Archaeology, in excavations. Parker began her career as a camp cook and expedition secretary, though she learned archaeological methods in the field from Mark Raymond Harrington, her uncle. This allowed her to later go on to discover and do a solo excavation at the pueblo site of Scorpion Hill in 1929. She also worked at Gypsum Cave, a site that was promoted as having the earliest evidence for human occupation of North America during the Pleistocene.
As the expedition secretary, Parker’s main role was to clean, repair and catalogue the finds. However, she also explored rooms of caves in her spare time, and through this discovered the skill of a species of extinct giant ground sloth, N. shastense, alongside ancient human tools. She also discovered the site of Corn Creek after seeing fossil camel bone protruding from an eroding lake bed.
Parker went on to work as an Assistant in Archaeology and Ethnology at the Southwest Museum. She published a number of papers in this field, conducting work at an exceptionally high level of skill, even without a university education.
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