Virginia Drew Watson (17 June 1918 – 7 December 2007) was an American cultural anthropologist who conducted fieldwork among the indigenous Guarani-Kaiowás people of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil and the Tairora and Gadsup tribes in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.
"[3] Earlier in her graduate studies, in 1941, Watson prepared a paper on the social organization of Tomah, Wisconsin for an Anthropology 330 course at the University of Chicago.
[1] Also, while a graduate student in 1942, Watson served as a part-time Lecturer at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
[citation needed] In his doctoral dissertation[5] titled "Cayuá Culture Change: A Study in Acculturation and Methodology", James Watson thanks his wife who "has given generously of her time at every stage of research and writing and of her first-hand knowledge of the Taquapiri group.
Watson’s painstaking analysis and well-developed comparative summary represent a substantial contribution to research on ceremonial trait influences reaching the United States area from Meso-America" [9].
[4] During her time working as a lecturer in St. Louis, Virginia and James Watson spent the summers of 1949 and 1950 in Del Norte, Colorado conducting community surveys related to jobs, business, cultural attitudes, and education, which was part of a larger study related to social stratification between English-speaking and Spanish-speaking residents of the Anglo-Spanish community in Colorado.
[4] While working as an affiliate curator, Virginia Watson wrote one of the first reports on the Prehistory of the Eastern Papua New Guinea Highlands.
Virginia Watson actively corresponded with American archaeologist Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr. in 1959 after requesting information about Herbert William Krieger's Columbia River research but failing to get a substantive response.
[8] From 1989 to 2001, Watson also corresponded with well-known female archaeologists and anthropologists, including Jacquetta Hawkes and Margaret Mead.
[1] The collection includes field notes from Brazil as well as Tairora, Agarabi, and Gadsup groups in Highland Papua New Guinea.