Robert L. Kelly

Robert Laurens Kelly (born March 16, 1957) is an American anthropologist who is a professor at the University of Wyoming.

He is running a major research project in Glacier National Park to examine the effects of climate change.

After graduating from Cornell, he moved west to continue his studies at the University of New Mexico where he received his MA in 1980.

He and David Hurst Thomas have written an introductory textbook titled Archaeology that is widely used in many colleges and universities.

Kelly's book The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways, published in 1995, is considered to be a landmark in anthropology.

In 1988 Kelly received the Weatherhead Fellow Award at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In the same year, he received the President's Young Investigator Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship at the University of Louisville.

These projects include assisting Robert Bettinger survey in the central Sierra Nevada in 1978; supervising the excavation at Triple-T Rockshelter, Nevada directed by David H. Thomas in 1976; directing the Carson-Stillwater Archaeological Project in Nevada from 1980 to 1981, 1986, and 1987–present; co-directing with Margaret Nelson at the Black Range Archaeological Project, Southwest New Mexico in 1988–1989; leading the test excavation of Mustang Rockshelter, Nevada in 1990; leading the Pine Springs reinvestigation of Southwestern Wyoming in 1998 and 2000; leading the investigation of Early Holocene/Late Pleistocene geology and archaeology of the Bighorn Mountains from 2001 to the present; and leading a research and excavation project in Glacier National Park in attempt to collect archaeological and paleoecological data related climate change.

Current understanding of hunter-gatherer mobility and foraging patterns are also influenced strongly by his research, fieldwork, and ethnology.

Kelly's research is focused on the Pleistocene colonization of the Americas as well as the effects of climate change to human cultural and behavioral adaptations.