Profile of Patricia L. Crown

Abstract

For more than four decades, Patricia Crown, a professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico, has conducted field investigations in the Ancestral Pueblo, Mogollon, and Hohokam areas of the American Southwest. Her work has revealed important aspects of these cultures concerning ceramics, trade, rituals, diet, gender roles, and more. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014, Crown five years earlier uncovered the first evidence of chocolate consumption in North America north of Mexico. Crown has also conducted an extensive analysis of organic residues from archaeological sites in the US Southwest and the Mexican Northwest, revealing widespread use of cacao and holly in communal, ritual gatherings dating from AD 750 to 1400. Portrait of Patricia Crown. Image courtesy of Wirt H. Wills (photographer). Excavations in room 28 of Pueblo Bonito; Patricia Crown is in the orange vest. Image courtesy of Wirt H. Wills (photographer). Crown’s father was an art professor at the University of Southern California, as well as a landscape painter. “He did most of his painting outside and often took his three children along,” Crown says, adding that her mother, a public school teacher, was also an artist, as were her two older sisters. “I had no talent for painting,” she says, “and so had to amuse myself in other ways.” One diversion was searching for artifacts during summer family camping trips to places in the American Southwest. It was during one such trip to New Mexico when 15-year-old Crown decided to become an archaeologist after years of being intrigued by landscapes and ruins. She says, “My parents both encouraged me to do whatever I was passionate about, and that was archaeology. So I read everything I could get my hands on and only applied to colleges that had good archaeology programs.” Crown chose the …