John Charles Kelley (1913–1997) was an American archaeologist who specialized in northern Meso-America and west Texas.
In the year of his graduation, directed the Harvard Peabody Museum-Sul Ross State Teachers College Expedition in the Big Bend area of Texas.
He was granted a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1948 based on his work with the School of American Research in Mexico and west Texas: Jumano and Patarabueye, Relations at La Junta de los Ríos.
The next year he moved to Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SIU) to direct that university's museum, which he was charged with modernizing, and to create an anthropology department.
[2] At SIU, he continued his work on the archaeology of northwest Texas and adjacent Mexico, but expanding his areas of interest to include more of Meso-America as well as Illinois.
General editor Robert Wauchope, University of Texas Press, Austin) This article, based on Kelley's work at Alta Vista and the Schroeder site south of Durango, Mexico (the latter undertaken in the mid-fifties), maintained that there were three distinct sister cultures in the Chalchihuites area: Chalchihuites, Malpaso (La Quemado) and Bolaños-Juchipila cultures.
11, Seminars in Archaeology: 1955: 59-127 Jesse D. Jennings, Erik K. Reed, James B. Griffin, J. Charles Kelley, Clement W. Meighan, Stanley Stubbs, Joe Ben Wheat and Dee C. Taylor.