LEGENDS OF ARCHAEOLOGY
A Late Starter and A Trailblazer Kathleen Gilmore was nearly 60 when she began her pioneering career in archaeology. By Elizabeth Lunday
Kathleen Kirk was born on November 12, 1914 in Altus, Oklahoma, and grew up in Tulsa. She decided as a girl to be an archaeologist. “When I was about 13 there was a whole article in the newspaper about the lost Maya civilization, and how nobody could read their script,” said Gilmore in an interview about a week before her death.“And I thought, oooh, I want to do that.” Her enthusiasm was dampened when she learned that
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n 1962, while excavating at the Gilbert site east of Dallas, a Native American camp that was a hub for the French trade network, Kathleen Gilmore unearthed an engraved brass artifact. Delighted with her find, she showed it to principal investigator Edward Jelks. He looked carefully at the piece of metal and said, “It’s a butt plate.” Gilmore stared at Jelks. Then she snapped, “Like hell it is!” and stomped off. “She thought I was trying to pull one over on her,” laughed Jelks, now emeritus professor of anthropology at Illinois State University. Gilmore wasn’t going to let anyone play her for a fool—she was determined to be taken seriously as an archaeologist. So it took a good bit of convincing to reassure her that what she had discovered was indeed the butt plate of a French musket. Gilmore herself came to find this story funny and she didn’t mind when “Like hell it is!” became a catch phrase among her friends and colleagues. But that was Kathleen Gilmore, by turns fierce and funny. This pioneering archaeologist never limited herself to one role. She was a dedicated stay-at-home mom and path-blazing career woman, a passionate researcher and a party-lover. Gilmore died on March 18, 2010 at age 95. She never stopped working. Even while waiting in the emergency room of a Dallas hospital—she’d been taken there after complaining of chest pains—she was focused on the book she was writing about Spanish Colonial Texas when she suffered a fatal heart attack.“But that was Kathleen,” said Tamra Walter, associate professor of archaeology at Texas Tech University. “She never let anything stop her.”
Gilmore at the Fort St. Louis site in 2001. Her ceramic analysis helped identify the site.
classical archaeology demanded knowledge of several languages, and Gilmore said she “wasn’t good at languages.” Further, when she graduated from high school, the country was deep in the Depression; Gilmore needed to find a job where she could make good money. She decided to go into geology, thinking she could find work with one of the oil companies in Oklahoma and Texas, but she was confronted by the entrenched sexism of the day, which was one of her most frustrating experiences.“I’ll tell you what was difficult,” said Gilmore.“I had a bachelor’s
summer • 2010
