Emma L. Davis

Emma Lou Davis was a graduate of Vassar College and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She was active as an artist for more than thirty years. Davis was one of the few women employed to create art for federal buildings during the New Deal era. She later changed careers and, in 1965, earned her Ph.D. in archaeology from UCLA. As a curator at the San Diego Museum of Man, Davis established the Great Basin Foundation and was integral to bringing scientific rigor to the field of Paleoindian archaeology in California.