After spending 50 years in New Mexico, leading decades of cultural resource management projects around the state and publishing archaeological research as affiliated faculty with New Mexico State University, Bradley J. Vierra received the New Mexico Archaeological Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award at their annual meeting in November.
“The Lifetime Achievement Award is a huge honor, but I told one of my colleagues, ‘None of these kids is going to know who I am.’ But I guess I was wrong. They are reading what I write, and these young archaeologists do know who I am. So, that was actually as much of an honor to me as winning the award.”
Vierra, who earned the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Award in 2019, is an affiliated scholar at NMSU in the Department of Anthropology. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1992 and much of his research was conducted in the American Southwest; however, he also worked in California, Washington and Texas, as well as Mexico, France, Portugal and Senegal. His research interests include hunter-gatherer archeology, stone tool technology, origins of agriculture, Archaic in the American Southwest, and Mesolithic in Southwest Europe. He has over 40 publications including five edited volumes.
“Brad Vierra’s scholarship is holistic and international in scope, spanning academic and applied topics that include Paleolithic Europe, the Archaic period of the American Southwest, and collaborative research designs that engage New Mexico’s Native American and Hispanic descendant communities,” said Rani Alexander, NMSU anthropology professor emerita, who worked with Vierra over the years. “He has continuously applied the knowledge gained from his wide array of investigations to inform and improve best practices in cultural resource management.”
Vierra initially traveled to New Mexico to work with Cynthia Irwin-Williams, a pioneer for women in the field of archaeology, on a project at the Salmon Ruins excavating a Chacoan site near Farmington, New Mexico. He worked with Irwin-Williams for several years, then spent decades doing cultural resource management work, which involves assessing, preserving and managing historical and archaeological sites threatened by development, ensuring cultural heritage is protected while balancing progress through surveys, mitigation and compliance with laws.
Vierra recently released a monograph he edited “Projectile Points of New Mexico: 13,000 Years of Technological Innovation,” a 200-page volume filled with historical details, measurements, defining attributes, age estimates, interpretations, references and images. The book has many contributing authors and is offered on the Archaeological Society of New Mexico's website, courtesy of the New Mexico Bureau of Land Management, which provided a grant for production costs, NMSU, which handled the contract, and Statistical Research, Inc., which produced the volume.
The book is broken up into chronologies with different projectile point types and some well-known flaked stone raw material source locations with color photographs.
“It took two years for me to put together the draft manuscript,” Vierra said. “We’re talking 13,000 years and 50 different projectile point types in New Mexico. I hope that federal and state agencies require this monograph be used so that we get consistency and accuracy in the identification of projectile points across the state.”
Alexander said the Lifetime Achievement Award reflects the value of Vierra’s life’s work in the field of anthropology.
“His work demonstrates an intellectual virtuosity that stands out among his peers, and his latest work provides an accessible capstone based on his years of research about Archaic period lithic technology,” Alexander said. “Both his academic and non-academic publications provide valuable and lasting contributions to our discipline that enable younger scholars to grow and build on his foundational research.”
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CUTLINE: From left, Bradley J. Vierra receives the New Mexico Archaeological Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award from Thatcher Seltzer-Rogers, Archaeological Society of New Mexico president, at their annual meeting in November. (Courtesy photo)
CUTLINE: Poster from the monograph: “Projectile Points of New Mexico: 13,000 Years of Technological Innovation.” (Courtesy image)