Kent, Dr. Susan

Susan Kent was born in 1952. In 1977, she took part in a New Mexico State University archaeological dig called the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project. In 1980, she received her Ph.D. For her doctoral dissertation, she studied spatial patterning of the Navajo Indians, Spanish Americans, and rural and urban Euro-Americans. In the early 1980's she studied the Pueblo II Mesa Verde Anasazi in southwestern Colorado. From 1985-86 she served as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Kentucky. Later in 1986, she joined the Old Dominion University (ODU) faculty to teach anthropology. At the time she arrived at ODU, she had five years of teaching experience, and an excellent record of scholarship and publication. In 1996, Kent was named a full professor. In 1999, she received the Charles O. and Elisabeth C. Burgess Faculty Research and Creativity Award. Also that year, she was elected to the American Anthropology Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Anthropology. As of February 2000, she was editor of the Archaeology Division column for the American Anthropological Association newsletter; on the Steering Committee of Build Form and Culture Research Association, and belonged to eight national and international professional associations. Also, in 2000, she was named an eminent scholar of anthropology at ODU for her consistent record of outstanding scholarly publications and her international reputation in the field of anthropology. Her works have appeared in journals published in Japan, Botswana, England, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia. In 2001, she received the Distinguished Scholar in Anthropology award from the Virginia Social Sciences Association. Kent was elected to the executive board of the American Anthropological Association for a three-year term that began in November 2002. In early 2003, she was elected as a member to the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society. This is only a partial list of her many involvements and achievements.

Kent was an expert on hunters and gatherers. As part of her ethnographic fieldwork, she studied numerous people including the Navajo and Tulalip Indians, Euro-Americans, and Spanish-speaking Americans. Her most extensive and long-term work was her field research in Botswana. Every summer from 1987 to 1995, and then again in 1997 and 2000, Kent spent considerable time studying the Bushmen and Bakgalagadi (Bantu-speakers) in the Kalahari Desert. The Bushmen, also known as Basarwa and San are a formerly nomadic people. In recent decades, they have been encouraged by government incentives to discard their nomadic lifestyle and settle. Incentives have included free food and drilling wells so these people no longer need to move about in search of these necessities. Special topics of interest for Kent were the use of space, gender roles, ethnoarchaeology, and health issues in these people. With regard to health issues, she was particularly interested in anemia and hemoglobin levels in hunter-gatherer peoples. While studying the Bushmen, she surveyed their dietary practices and monitored medical examinations of these people. In the field of archaeology, she excavated sites that range in date from Paleo-Indian societies to historic twentieth century sites of Native Americans. During the summers of 1998 and 1999, she surveyed and excavated African Stone Age sites including the Caledon River Valley in South Africa.

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