Departmental News

Posted:  Feb 20, 2026 - 12:00pm

PaleoAmerica Volume 11, No 3-4 features a special edition with Papers in Honor of Bruce B. Huckell with Guest editors: J. David Kilby (UNM PhD, 2008), Joseph M. Birkmann (UNM PhD, 2025), Briggs Buchanan (UNM PhD, 2005), Marcus J. Hamilton (UNM PhD, 2008), Vance T. Holliday (UC Boulder PhD, 1982), Christopher Merriman (UNM PhD, 2022), and Susan Ruth (UNM PhD, 2013).  In their note from the editors, Dr. Kilby writes:

It is with great pleasure and a degree of sorrow that we present this double issue of PaleoAmerica, a collection of papers in honor of Dr. Bruce B. Huckell (1950–2024). The majority of the 12 papers are derived from a two-part symposium at the 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Denver in 2025. The original intent of the symposium was to honor Bruce's retirement from teaching at the University of New Mexico (UNM) and from service to the UNM Maxwell Museum. I am pleased to say that we – many of the editors and authors represented here - shared our plan with Bruce over cold beers after a hot day in the field at the Mockingbird Gap and Blue Canyon Clovis sites, and he seemed visibly touched and honored at the thought of it. We reached out to students, friends, and colleagues, and, perhaps not surprisingly, many people were eager to participate. A half-day symposium was already starting to come together in the fall of 2023, when Bruce confided that he might not be with us in Denver. Bruce passed away in the spring of 2024. The symposium was transformed into a memorial, and the number of participants swelled to warrant two sessions over the full course of the day. The presentations ranged from Paleoindian through Archaic and early agriculture research, and from lithic analysis to geoarchaeology to museum studies, and were interspersed with fond recollections of Bruce Huckell as a scholar, mentor, colleague, and friend.

Even before Bruce's passing, PaleoAmerica editor Ashley Smallwood generously offered to publish the Paleoindian-themed symposium papers in a special volume. The symposia were chaired by Joseph Birkmann, Briggs Buchanan, Marcus Hamilton, David Kilby, Chris Merriman, and Sue Ruth (each a student of Bruce Huckell at UNM), and along with Vance Holliday, we proceeded to serve as guest editors of this published collection. On behalf of the guest editors, I would like to thank Ashley Smallwood for all her encouragement and hard work (she did most of the heavy lifting) and thank each of the symposium participants and the authors of these papers. I am confident that Bruce would have thoroughly enjoyed them all. In the first paper, Bruce Huckell's long-time friend and collaborator Vance Holliday and Bruce's wife and frequent collaborator Lisa Huckell presents a biographical overview of Bruce's life and career, along with a more thorough introduction to the papers that follow. The papers not only honor the memory and legacy of Bruce Huckell, but each is a valuable contribution to our shared interest in the early archaeology of the Americas.

Other papers in the volume include: