Robert L Kelly

Biographic Data

ID124116
NAMERobert L Kelly
GIVEN NAMESRobert L
FAMILY NAMEKelly
SIGNATUREKELLY R L
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Wyoming
ORCID0000-0001-9737-0152
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS70
TOTAL CITATIONS1999
AUTHOR COUNT70
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1924
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX13

  • The Meanings and Dividends of Man the Hunter

    Open AccessVivek V Venkataraman, E H Hagen et al.ARTICLEEvolution and Human Behavior2026

    The phrase Man the Hunter is associated with disparate meanings across communities of scholars, journalists, and the public, which has led to unnecessary scientific disagreement and popular misunderstanding. In this paper, we ask: what does Man the Hunter mean? We distinguish three historical meanings of Man the Hunter. First, in the early-to-mid 20th century, popular writers propagated ideas of human evolution that focused on hunting, men, aggre…

  • Anthropogenic burning of small mammals at the Early Paleoindian La Prele Site in Converse County, Wyoming

    Open AccessMcKenna L Litynski, Todd A Surovell et al.ARTICLEJournal of Archaeological Science…2026

  • The view from 30,000 feet

    Vivek V Venkataraman, Robert L KellyARTICLEHunter Gatherer Research2025

  • Identifying and Investigating Deeply Buried Activity Areas at the La Prele Site

    Open AccessMadeline E Mackie, Todd A Surovell et al.ARTICLEPaleoAmerica2025

    Before 2023, excavations at the La Prele site identified three hearth-centered areas associated with mammoth remains. In 2022 and 2023, more than 150 augers across the site suggested the presence of a bone bed and a fourth activity area with the potential for dense archaeological deposits. Here we report preliminary results comparing the expected versus actual artifact densities to evaluate the use of auger surveys for identifying artifact cluste…

  • Female foragers sometimes hunt, yet gendered divisions of labor are real

    Open AccessVivek V Venkataraman, Jordie Hoffman et al.ARTICLEEvolution and Human Behavior2024

  • Estimating the Size and Density of the La Prele Site

    Open AccessSpencer R Pelton, Todd A Surovell et al.ARTICLEJournal of Archaeological Method…2024References: 18

  • Do counts of radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites reflect human population density? A preliminary empirical validation examining spatial variation across late Holocene California

    Open AccessB F Codding, Jack Meyer et al.ARTICLERadiocarbon2024References: 81

    Researchers increasingly rely on aggregations of radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites as proxies for past human populations. This approach has been critiqued on several grounds, including the assumptions that material is deposited, preserved, and sampled in proportion to past population size. However, various attempts to quantitatively assess the approach suggest there may be some validity in assuming date counts reflect relative populatio…

  • The Geochronological and Geoarchaeological Context of the Clovis-Age La Prele Mammoth Site (48CO1401), Converse County, Wyoming

    Sarah A Allaun, Todd A Surovell et al.ARTICLEPaleoAmerica2023References: 20

    The La Prele Mammoth site (48CO1401), located in Converse County, Wyoming, contains a Clovis-age occupation associated with the remains of a subadult mammoth (Mammuthus columbi). In this paper, we present the geochronological and geoarchaeological context of the site. The La Prele Mammoth site is buried in an alluvial terrace of La Prele Creek, a tributary of the North Platte River, which acts as an important migration corridor through the Rocky …

  • Rapid increase in production of symbolic artifacts after 45,000 years ago is not a consequence of taphonomic bias

    Open AccessRobert L Kelly, Madeline E Mackie et al.ARTICLEJournal of Archaeological Science2023Cited by: 2References: 28

  • Current Understanding of the Earliest Human Occupations in the Americas

    Ben A Potter, James C Chatters et al.ARTICLEPaleoAmerica2022

    Various chronologies of the earliest Native American occupations have been proposed with varying levels of empirical support and conceptual rigor, yet none is widely accepted. A recent survey of pre-Clovis dated sites (Becerra-Valdivia and Higham 2020) concludes a pre-Last Glacial Maximum (>26,500–19,000 cal yr BP) entry of humans in the Americas, in part based on recent work at Chiquihuite Cave, Mexico. We evaluate the evidence used to develop t…

  • Scale Matters

    Open AccessNurit Bird‐david, Stephan Henn et al.BOOKScale Matters2022

    For the greater part of the 20 th century, hunter-gatherer societies were regarded as "small-scale societies" by modern sociology (see Barth ed.1978 for overview).The broad distinction between "small-scale" and "large-scale" was increasingly losing its overall analytical grip in the late 20 th century, also with regard to the classification of hunter-gatherers in these terms.Anthropologists who approached hunter-gatherers from ecological-evolutio…

  • A New Radiocarbon Database for the Lower 48 States

    Open AccessRobert L Kelly, Madeline E Mackie et al.ARTICLEAmerican Antiquity2022Cited by: 7References: 17

    From 2014 to 2020, we compiled radiocarbon ages from the lower 48 states, creating a database of more than 100,000 archaeological, geological, and paleontological ages that will be freely available to researchers through the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database. Here, we discuss the process used to compile ages, general characteristics of the database, and lessons learned from this exercise in 'big data' compilation

  • New Discoveries and Theoretical Implications for the Last Foraging and First Farming in East Asia

    Open AccessRobert L KellyARTICLEQuaternary2021Cited by: 1References: 6

    A brief summation of the issue’s articles is presented. This leads to a discussion of thematic issues of concepts, methods, and theory that crosscut the articles. These include use of the EnvCalc2.1 program, some issues of terminology, the theoretical approaches of niche construction as opposed to human behavioral ecology (HBE), and the linkage between technology and subsistence change, notably the difference between biface and microblade product…

  • Evaluating Claims of Early Human Occupation at Chiquihuite Cave, Mexico

    James C Chatters, Ben A Potter et al.ARTICLEPaleoAmerica2021Cited by: 9References: 25

    Archaeologists working in Mexico recently claimed evidence for pre-Last Glacial Maximum human occupation in the Americas, based on lithic items excavated from Chiquihuite Cave, Zacatecas. Although they provide extensive array of ancillary studies of the cave's chronostratigraphic and paleoenvironmental record, the data they present do not support their central argument, that these lithic items are anthropogenic and represent a unique lithic indus…

  • Binford, Lewis R. (Hunter-Gatherer and Mid-Range Societies)

    Open AccessRobert L KellyCHAPTEREncyclopedia of Global Archaeology2020

  • A first empirical analysis of population stability in North America using radiocarbon records

    Open AccessDarcy Bird, J Freeman et al.ARTICLEThe Holocene2020Cited by: 11References: 26

    Questions regarding population stability among animals and plants are fundamental to population ecology, yet this has not been a topic studied by archeologists focusing on prehistoric human populations. This is an important knowledge gap. The fluctuation of human populations over decades to centuries – population instability – may constrain the expansion of human economies. A first step toward describing basic patterns of population stability wou…

  • Confirming a Cultural Association at the La Prele Mammoth Site (48CO1401), Converse County, Wyoming

    Open AccessMadeline E Mackie, Todd A Surovell et al.ARTICLEAmerican Antiquity2020Cited by: 13References: 58

    Archaeologists have long subjected Clovis megafauna kill/scavenge sites to the highest level of scrutiny. In 1987, a Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) was found in spatial association with a small artifact assemblage in Converse County, Wyoming. However, due to the small tool assemblage, limited nature of the excavations, and questions about the security of the association between the artifacts and mammoth remains, the site was never included…

  • The Importance of Spatial Data to Open-Access National Archaeological Databases and the Development of Paleodemography Research

    Open AccessErick Robinson, Chris Nicholson et al.ARTICLEAdvances in Archaeological Practice2019Cited by: 6References: 15

    With generous support from the National Science Foundation, we have spent the past four years developing an archaeological radiocarbon database for the United States. Here, we highlight the importance of spatial data for open-access, national-scale archaeological databases and the development of paleodemography research. We propose a new method for analyzing radiocarbon time series in the context of paleoclimate models. This method forces us to c…

  • Long-distance transport of red ocher by Clovis foragers

    Open AccessSandra Elzbieta Zarzycka, Todd A Surovell et al.ARTICLEJournal of Archaeological Science…2019Cited by: 14References: 16

  • Spatiotemporal dynamics of prehistoric human population growth

    Open AccessErick Robinson, H Jabran Zahid et al.ARTICLEJournal of Archaeological Science2018Cited by: 23References: 29

  • Culture Process and the Interpretation of Radiocarbon Data

    Open AccessJacob Freeman, David A Byers et al.ARTICLERadiocarbon2018Cited by: 17References: 38

    Over the last decade, archaeologists have turned to large radiocarbon ( 14 C) data sets to infer prehistoric population size and change. An outstanding question concerns just how direct of an estimate 14 C dates are for human populations. In this paper we propose that 14 C dates are a better estimate of energy consumption, rather than an unmediated, proportional estimate of population size. We use a parametric model to describe the relationship b…

  • Climate change and archaeology

    Open AccessNicolas Naudinot, Robert L KellyARTICLEQuaternary International2017

  • Were Hominins in California ∼130,000 Years Ago

    T J Braje, T D Dillehay et al.ARTICLEPaleoAmerica2017Cited by: 17References: 5

    In a controversial study published in Nature, Holen et al. (2017) claim that hominins fractured mastodon bones and teeth with stone cobbles in California ∼130,000 years ago. Their claim implies a human colonization of the New World more than 110,000 years earlier than the oldest widely accepted archaeological sites in the Americas. It is also at odds with genetic and fossil evidence for the dispersal of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) o…

  • Agriculture, population growth, and statistical analysis of the radiocarbon record

    Open AccessH Jabran Zahid, Erick Robinson et al.ARTICLEProceedings of the National…2016

    Significance We statistically analyze the radiocarbon record and show that early farming societies in Europe grew at the same rate as contemporaneous foraging societies in North America. Thus, our results challenge the commonly held view that the advent of agriculture was linked to accelerated growth of the human population. The same rates of prehistoric population growth measured worldwide suggest that the global climate and/or biological factor…

  • The Fifth Beginning

    Robert L KellyBOOKFifth Beginning2016

    “I have seen yesterday. I know tomorrow.” This inscription in Tutankhamun’s tomb summarizes The Fifth Beginning . Here, archaeologist Robert L. Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity. In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author e…