Donald Ward Lathrap was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 archaeologist who specialized in the study of neolithic American culture. He was a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at the time of his death.

Education

Lathrap was raised in the area north of Berkeley, California

Surprise Valley (San Bernardino County, California)

Surprise Valley is located about seven miles east of Landers or three miles west of Sunfair Heights in San Bernardino County, California. It is north of Joshua Tree National Park. The valley is an areal feature and the approximate center of the area is ....

. He graduated from Berkeley High School. In 1950 he received a Bachelor's degree

Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

 in Anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

 from the University of California at Berkelely

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, studying under Alfred L. Kroeber

Alfred L. Kroeber

Alfred Louis Kroeber was an American anthropologist. He was the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and played an integral role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology, where he served as director from 1909 through...

 and Carl Sauer. While at UCB, Lathrap worked as an assistant archaeologist for the California Archaeological Survey. He published several papers on the archaeology of the California area. He also worked at Berkeley's Lowie Museum of Anthropology (now the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology

Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology

The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology is an anthropology museum located in Berkeley, California...

). This exposure to museum artifacts convinced him that material culture is a valuable source for historical research.

Lathrap left California in 1959, taking a post at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where he significantly influenced the department's archaeological direction. He worked in South American archaeology, which focused on the Amazon and Peru. He also researched California and Mid-West archaeology. His orientation was significantly influenced by Sauer's geographical considerations. Much of his early career was marked by his heated disagreements with Betty Meggers

Betty Meggers

Betty Jane Meggers is an American archaeologist best known for her work conducted in association with her husband, Cliff Evans, in South America. Meggers was born on December 5, 1921, in Washington D.C. to William and Edith Meggers. Meggers's father was a physicist as well as an archaeology...

 over the respective roles of diffusion and local development. Lathrap proposed that Amazonia

Amazon Basin

The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...

 was an important center of origin of agriculture, whereas Meggers looked to Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 as a source of South American innovation.

Lathrap took graduate studies at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, where he studied under Gordon Willey

Gordon Willey

Gordon Randolph Willey was an American archaeologist famous for his fieldwork in South and Central America as well as the southeastern United States...

. He received a Ph.D.

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

in Anthropology from Harvard in 1962.

Career

In his later career Lathrap curated several museum exhibits. His most influential exhibit, "Ancient Ecuador: Culture, Clay and Creativity 3000-300 B.C.," was organized for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and traveled to many major museums (Lathrap et al. 1975). In 1975 he was appointed a research associate with the Department of Anthropology at the Field Museum.

In one of his most recent works, Lathrap and R. C. Troike joined their expertise in California archaeology and linguistics to model the dynamics of West Coast culture history (Lathrap and Troike 1988). Using their understanding of linguistics, they suggested that the West Coast was an important corridor and had been occupied earlier than generally accepted today.

Lathrap was a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois when he died of an embolism following abdominal surgery in May 1990.