Necrology

George T. “Tom” Jones

Aug. 23, 1951-Nov. 1, 2024

George T. “Tom” Jones, the Elias W. Leavenworth Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, died on Nov. 1, 2024. Born on Aug. 23, 1951, in Sedro-Woolley, Wash., “he lived an idyllic young life in a small rural area with activities ranging from catching frogs at the swamp and building tunnels out of hay bales, to skiing, swimming, and riding horses,” noted a published obituary.

Throughout his childhood, Tom also dreamed of becoming an archaeologist — a goal he fulfilled after earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1984 from the University of Washington. Along the way, he met and married fellow archaeologist Charlotte Beck.

Tom and Charlotte arrived at Hamilton in 1984 and the following year began offering students the opportunity to participate in what would become a popular archaeological field school in Nevada’s Great Basin. “Because of their research,” his colleagues would later write, “archaeologists probably have the most detailed knowledge of mobility patterns in the Great Basin compared to anywhere else in the world. How exciting must it have been for Tom and Charlotte’s students to be part of that legacy.”

A highly regarded instructor and mentor, Tom received the Samuel and Helen Lang Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2001. A fellow professor said, “Tom was a dear friend, supportive colleague, and tremendous fun as a co-teacher, deeply thoughtful, always extending his own areas of knowledge to connect with others.” Another wrote that “Tom was one of the most kind, thoughtful, and wise members of our community who was an excellent mentor to young faculty and always present for our students.”

Tom was a nationally and internationally recognized scholar whose work focused on hunter-gatherer adaptation to desert environments. Three of his colleagues in the Anthropology Department, when nominating him for the Dean’s Career Achievement Award that he won in 2015, wrote, “He has published some of the most highly cited works in Paleoindian archaeology. An overview of the Paleoindian archaeology of the Great Basin, published in 1997, has become one of the most widely cited papers both regionally and nationally.”

In addition, a monograph he co-published in 2009 with Charlotte was cited by a member of the National Academy of Sciences as the best piece of work ever written on the Paleoindian record of the Great Basin. They said the couple’s work “on theory, method, and prehistory has been widely cited both nationally and internationally,” and that he “has published, singly, with Charlotte, or with other researchers, over 60 articles in refereed journals, including top-tier journals such as American Antiquity, Current Anthropology, Journal of Archaeological Science, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Journal of World Prehistory, Quaternary Research, and Science.”

Following Tom’s retirement from teaching in 2017, he and Charlotte moved permanently to Santa Fe, N.M., where they had spent many vacations and, later, summers as part-time residents.

In addition to his wife, Tom Jones is survived by two sisters, and nieces and a nephew. 

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