Patricia Joan Netherly

On 18 September 2026 Patricia J. Netherly died in Baltimore, Maryland from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. She was born in St. Paul Minnesota on 3 May 1938 to Robert L. Netherly and Joan Watkins Netherly. As a child, she lived in Caracas, Venezuela where she learned Spanish. Patricia graduated from Swarthmore College with highest honors in History in 1960 and earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cornell University in 1977. In 1960 she married Luis Deustua and moved to Peru, where her three children were born. While living in Lima, she taught English at the Centro Cultural Británico and took classes at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru. She taught at the State University of New York, Fredonia in New York State, at William-Hobart Smith College and at the Pontificia Universidad Católica. Patricia spent the latter part of her career as a Research Associate at Vanderbilt University.

In 1968, Patricia started graduate school at Cornell University where she was Professor John Murra’s student. She was a mentor and inspiration to many anthropologists and archaeologists in the United States, Peru, and Ecuador. Patricia’s research brought together archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnology to study the cultural development of societies in the Andes and western Amazonia over time. Her theoretical interests included the socio-political organization and the political economy of archaic states with particular reference to the Chimu and Inka in the Andes, modalities of complexity in pre-state societies, the cultural ecology of the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene in South America and well as in later periods. She directed two long-term research projects in Ecuador: the Proyecto Arqueológico Tahuin on the coast of El Oro province under the sponsorship of the Banco Central del Ecuador, and the Proyecto Arqueológico del Oriente in Ecuadorian Amazonia under the sponsorship of the Fundación Alexander von Humboldt in Quito where she was Executive Director. She also co-directed the Proyecto Zaña-Niepos in Northern Peru and worked as a researcher and data analyst on the Huaca Prieta Project. She co-edited three books and published numerous articles. She was finishing a book on the political structure of the polities of the North Coast of Peru and had in hand a study of the archaeology of the Western Amazon.

Patricia will be greatly missed by many friends and colleagues, and her children, Susana, Elena, and Gonzalo Deustua, son-in-law Jay Frogel, her six grandchildren - Geoffrey Cromwell (Emily Bockmon), Erol Cromwell (Michelle Boddy), Kai Deustua-Frogel, Elizabeth Crawford (John Crawford), Sebastian and Andres Deustua, and five great grandchildren, Zoe, Elwood, Emmett, Isabel and Wyatt.

A memorial/celebration of life will be held later this year, date TBD.

In lieu of flowers,  please contribute to your favorite charity or organization. 

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