Kit W. Wesler, Ph.D., University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Professor of Archaeology
Director, Mid-America Remote Sensing Center
Ph.D. University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, 1982.
M.A. University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, 1977.
B.A. summa cum laude Washington
University, 1975.
Research Interests
Dr. Wesler's research interests
encompass the late prehistoric and historical archaeology of Eastern North
America, West Africa and the Caribbean, the comparative study of complex
societies, and computer applications to archaeology.
Currently, Dr. Wesler is continuing to analyze 15 years of
excavations at the Wickliffe Mounds site in Ballard County, Kentucky, the
2005-2006 excavations and survey at Columbus-Belmont State Park in Hickman
County, Kentucky and 2008 and 2010 excavations at Hematite, in the Land between
the Lakes Recreation Area. He is
collaborating on a book reporting a study of the Taino
of the north coast of Jamaica, and has recently returned to Jamaica to begin an
archaeological investigation of the town of Falmouth.
Dr. Wesler served as a Project Archaeologist for the
Maryland Historical Trust before coming to Murray State University, as a
Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Ibadan,
Nigeria, while on leave from MSU in 1985-1986, and as a Fulbright Professor at
the University of the West Indies in Jamaica while on leave from MSU in Spring,
2002. He was Director of the Wickliffe Mounds Research Center from 1983-2004.
Major Publications:
1981 Models
for Pleistocene extinction. North American Archaeologist 2(2):85-100.
1983
Trade politics and native polities in Iroquoia and
Asante. Comparative Studies in Society and
History 25(4):641-660.
1983 Typology
and sequence in the Maryland Archaic. Southeastern Archaeology 2(1):21-29.
1985 Model
and sequence in the Maryland Archaic. In Roy S. Dickens, Jr.,
and H. Trawick Ward, eds., Structure and Process in
Southeastern Archaeology, pp. 212-228. University of
Alabama Press.
1991
Ceramics, chronology, and horizon markers at Wickliffe Mounds, 15Ba4. American Antiquity 56(2):278-290.
1993 The
Introduction of Imported Ceramics in Nigeria: an archaeological perspective.
West African Journal of Archaeology 22:109-132.
1994
Historical archaeology and prehistory: experimenting with dating formulas for
Mississippi period ceramics. Midcontinental Journal
of Archaeology 19(2):260-290.
1997 The
Wickliffe Mounds project: implications for late Mississippi period chronology,
settlement and mortuary patterns in Western Kentucky. Proceedings of the
Prehistoric Society 63:261-283.
1998 (edited)
Historical Archaeology in Nigeria. Africa World Press,
Lawrenceville NJ.
1999
Chronological sequences in Nigerian ceramics. African Archaeological Review 16(4):239-258.
2001
Excavations at Wickliffe Mounds.
University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
Most
recent papers and publications:
2007 A Pilot Survey of Church Sites in Western
Kentucky. Ohio Valley Historical Archaeology 22:21-30.
2007 Allsworth-Jones,
Philip, Michele Bogle-Douglas, and Kit W. Wesler,
Defining the Montego Bay Style: A Re-consideration of R. L. Vanderwal’s
Work in Jamaica. Proceedings of the
21st Congress of the International Association for Caribbean
Archaeology, University of the West Indies-St. Augustine (Trinidad), July 2005,
vol. 1, 372-380. University
of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad.
2008
Wickliffe
Mounds State Historic Site. In Frances H. Kennedy, ed., American Indian Places: A Historical Guidebook, p.
100. Houghton
Mifflin Co., New York.
2008 Comments on the archaeology of comparative
slavery. Ohio Valley Historical Archaeology 23:1-7.
2009 Wickliffe Mounds State Park and Research
Center. in Archaeology in
America, an Encyclopedia, edited by Francis P. McManamon,
pp. 167-169. Greenwood
Publishing Group, Westport, Connecticut.
2010 Test Excavations at Columbus-Belmont
State Park and Hematite, Western Kentucky.
Presented to the Symposium on Ohio Valley Urban and Historic
Archaeology, Blue Licks Battlefield State Park, Kentucky, 27
March 2010.
2010 Fifty years (Almost) of Western Kentucky
Prehistoric Ceramics. Presented to the
symposium Pots, Political Complexity, and Remote Sensing: Papers in Honor of R.
Berle Clay’s Contributions to Southeastern
Prehistory, Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Lexington KY, 28 October 2010.
2011 Digitization and the Murray State University
Archaeology Program, Part 2. Presented
to the Kentucky Heritage Council Archaeology Conference, Natural Bridge State
Park, Slade, Kentucky, 19 March 2011.
2011 Theory, theories, postulates, and hypotheses:
are there theories in archaeology?
Presented to the Symposium on Ohio Valley Urban and Historic
Archaeology, Wartburg, Illinois, 26 March 2011.
E-mail: Kit.Wesler@murraystate.edu