Kathleen K. Gilmore (November 12, 1914 – March 18, 2010) was an American archaeologist and specialist on Spanish colonial archaeology. She was the first archaeologist to prove the location of Fort St. Louis, established by the French explorer, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. She received the J. C. Harrington Award of Society for Historical Archaeology in 1995, the first woman ever honored by the society.
Early life
Kathleen Kirk was born on November 12, 1917, in Altus, Jackson County, Oklahoma, to Jesse (née Horton) and Rufus Patrick Kirk. She was the middle child of three and had an older sister and younger brother. Raised in Altus until she was twelve, the family moved to Tulsa, where she completed her secondary education. Beginning her studies in geology at the University of Tulsa (TU), after three years, she transferred to the University of Oklahoma (OU), where she obtained a bachelor of science degree. Hoping to work in the growing petroleum industry, she was unable to find employment in the male-dominated field during the Great Depression and enrolled in business school to learn secretarial skills.
Career
Kirk had worked throughout her schooling at the Bone and Joint Center in Tulsa and the TU Library, after graduation she looked for a position as a geologist and found few opportunities for women. Taking a job as an editorial assistant at the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in Tulsa, she worked for a year, before she found a steady job. In the late 1930s, Kirk moved to Houston and took a job working as a stenographer for Humble Oil. Her employers appreciated her knowledge of geological terms, but hired her as administrative staff. Disliking the stenography pool, Kirk left to work as a typist with Superior Oil Company in Corpus Christi and eventually returned to Houston to work with Standard Oil of Kansas, where she remained until 1940, when she married petroleum engineer, Robert Beattie Gilmore, on Christmas Day.
Soon after their marriage, the couple moved to Dallas, where Robert took a position with DeGolyer and MacNaughton, of which he would later become president. Gilmore remained at home and raised their four daughters, Betsy, Judy, Pat and Sally and then in the early 1960s, she became involved with the Dallas Archaeological Society, participating in field schools, hosted around Dallas. One of the first digs she participated in was at the Gilbert site in Rains County, Texas, in 1962. The following year, Gilmore enrolled in a new graduate-level program for anthropology offered by Southern Methodist University (SMU), studying under the tutelage of Ed Jelks and Fred Wendorf. Her first published paper, issued in 1967, dealt with the excavations she had conducted at Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas and at Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá.
At the time of her studies, there was an ongoing academic debate in the archaeological field as to whether the discipline encompassed only pre-historic sites or whether both historic and ancient sites were within the field. She attended a conference in 1967, in St. Louis of the Central States Archaeological Society, where the issue was debated, noting the ongoing reconstructions of Colonial Williamsburg. The group decided to form the Society for Historical Archaeology later that same year. As Gilmore was interested in history, she developed a method in which she used historic archival materials to inform her planning for field work, but was careful to note that flaws in records, inherent systemic biases and human error could alter the reliability of material.
Gilmore began searching for the complex of the San Xavier Mission in Milam County, Texas, in 1968, which included the missions of Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, San Ildefonso, and San Francisco Xavier de Horcasitas, as well as the presidio of San Francisco Xavier de Gigedo. Successfully locating all three mission communities, using a Spanish survey from the time of the construction of the missions, and identifying the presidio site, the field work she conducted there became the basis of her master's thesis, The San Xavier Mission: A Study in Historical Site Identification. After completing her master's degree in 1968, Gilmore contracted to work at several sites, focusing on Caddoan excavations around Lake Palestine and Rosario Mission for the Parks Department.
