Kenneth G. Kelly 
(B.A. Anthropology UCLA, 1985; 
M.A. Anthropology College of William and Mary, 1989; 
Ph.D. Anthropology UCLA, 1995)

Like many archaeologists, I first felt the pull of the past as a youngster.  I can't remember when I didn't want to be an archaeologist.  This desire was nurtured as a youth by travel throughout the US and Western Europe, allowing me to visit first hand many interesting historical and archaeological sites.  My initial archaeological fieldwork experience occurred as an undergraduate, when I spent the summer in New Mexico living and working on the Pajarito Plateau northwest of Santa Fe.  While an undergraduate at UCLA I found what was for me the perfect mix of history and archaeology - the study of Historical Archaeology.  Being introduced to this field by Professor Merrick Posnansky also kindled my other anthropological passion - African Archaeology.  Since those first courses at UCLA as an undergraduate, I have specialized in Historical Archaeology and African Archaeology.  My research interests include the archaeological study of culture contact and change, especially as seen in the setting of the African Diaspora, the origin and development of complex societies, and ethnohistory.  I have primarily pursued these interests in West Africa and the Caribbean, where I have been involved in archaeological projects in Bénin and Togo, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique.  I returned to Bénin in the summer of 1999 with two graduate students from our department to bring my 8-year research project at Savi, Bénin to a close.  In 2001 I began a new research project in Guadeloupe, a French department in the Caribbean.  This work is explained further in several other sections of my web page, and I encourage you to follow this link Caribbean Research.  In 2004 I began two new projects in the Caribbean.  One, with Mark Hauser (Ph.D. Syracuse), is a study of ceramic production and distribution in Martinique and Guadeloupe through the use of neutron activation analysis and thin-section petrography.  The other project is an archaeological investigation of a sugar plantation in Martinique, and will develop as a comparison to work I have conducted in Guadeloupe. During the summer of 2005 I led an international team of students working in both Guadeloupe and Martinique. In Guadeloupe, we finished our project at Habitation La Mahaudière, and in Martinique we began a project at Habitation Creve Coeur with a survey and shovel test program to delimit the 18th and 19th century slave village of that estate. In January 2006 I conducted an initial site visit to Guinea, West Africa, where a series of sites exist that are associated with the slave trade to South Carolina. In 2007 I led an international team of 10 students to continue research at Habitation Crève Cœur in Martinique. I am gearing up for a field season at Crève Cœur in July 2008.

I am in my tenth year at USC, where I came after teaching for two years at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.  I teach a variety of introductory and advanced courses for undergraduates and graduate students, including Introduction to Biological Anthropology, Introduction to Archaeology, Panoramas and Prehistory, Historical Archaeology, Historical Archaeology Lab, and the Archaeology of the African Diaspora, among others.  I  currently chair four Ph.D. committees, and have chaired over a dozen MA thesis committees (see them under Graduate Students working with me) and I also serve on several other MA and Ph.D. thesis committees.  I serve as the Undergraduate Director for the Anthropology Department, and I am the coordinator of the Historical Archaeology and Cultural Resource Management Graduate Certificate Program.  I have published nearly thirty articles and book chapters, more than thirty book reviews and encyclopedia entries, and have delivered more than fifty papers at professional conferences. I am the editor of the Current Research in Africa column for the Newsletter of the Society for Historical Archaeology.