Elizabeth "Betchen" Wayland Barber '58 honored as 2010 Ranney Award Winner

Betchen is professor emerita at Occidental College and author of several books,
including the award-winning Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years, named one of the “100 Best Science Books of the Century” by Sigma Xi, and her most recent, When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth. Considered the
preeminent authority on prehistoric textiles, she is acclaimed and well respected in the fields of linguistics and archaeology.

Her lifelong accomplishments as a teacher, lecturer, author, and researcher, along with her dedication to education, are among the reasons Betchen was named this year’s Ranney Award recipient.

A former faculty member of Occidental College’s departments of Languages and Linguistics as well as Anthropology, Betchen has conducted over 40 years of research in her fields. Holding a bachelor’s degree in Archaeology and Greek from Bryn Mawr College and a doctorate in Linguistics from Yale University, she has authored five books, including The Mummies of Ürümchi, concerning the prehistoric Caucasian mummies coming to the Bowers Museum from China this spring. She also founded the Occidental Folk and Historical Dance Troupe almost 40 years ago, which is still active today.

In 2009, Betchen held a lecture in Pasadena detailing her archaeological expedition in Chinese Turkistan. The lecture was attended by Betchen’s former Westridge teacher, Daphne Sanders Kurchak ’49. “To see a favorite student again after so many years, and hear her talk of her work in the field she has made her own, was a thrill and so satisfying,” said Kurchak. “Even back...in Latin class, there were already signs of her interests developing.”