1. Betty Jane Meggers was an American archaeologist best known for her work in South America.
20 Facts About Betty Meggers
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Betty Meggers was considered influential at the Smithsonian Institution, where she was long associated in research, and she wrote extensively about environment as a shaper of human cultures.
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Betty Jane Meggers was born in Washington, DC, to Dr William Frederick Meggers and Edith R Meggers.
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Betty Meggers's father was an internationally recognized spectroscopist as well as an archaeology enthusiast.
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Betty Meggers often took the family to visit Native American sites.
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Betty Meggers graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in 1943 and a year later earned a master's degree from the University of Michigan.
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Betty Meggers's dissertation, entitled The Archaeological Sequence on Marajo Island, Brazil with Special Reference to the Marajoara Culture.
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Betty Meggers conducted research in the Lesser Antilles and Micronesia.
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Betty Meggers first worked in anthropology at the age of 16, volunteering at the Smithsonian Institution and helping to reconstruct pots excavated from Pueblo Bonito, an Ancestral Pueblo village in New Mexico.
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At the University of Michigan, Betty Meggers was introduced to ancient ceramics from Marajo Island, in the Amazon Basin of Brazil.
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Betty Meggers published her first scientific article on the Marajoara culture in 1945.
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In 1954, Betty Meggers proposed her environmental limitation theory, relating the idea of productivity of environment to complexity of society.
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Betty Meggers suggested that environmental and agricultural resources acted as a limit on cultural complexity.
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Partly as a result of this theory, Betty Meggers was among those who believed that early cultures did not develop in the Amazon basin.
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Betty Meggers thought settlements were established by migrants from highland areas.
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Betty Meggers bolstered her argument that trans-Pacific migrants from Japan were responsible for this pottery by noting that plants, pathogens, and parasites of Japanese origin are found among Andean populations.
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Betty Meggers's theory was challenged by other archaeologists due to the distance between Ecuador and Japan, and a lack of evidence for complex Jomon sailing technologies.
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Betty Meggers wrote nearly two hundred articles, book reviews, translations, and books.
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Betty Meggers published in many leading scientific journals such as American Anthropologist, American Antiquity, Science, and Scientific American.
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Betty Meggers was widely acknowledged for her contributions to the field of archaeology and South American studies.