Ruthann Knudson

I have known Ruthann since the mid 1970s. She was a great mentor and friend. She was always encouraging and helped me both professionally and emotionally. I will miss her greatly.

I met Ruth Ann Knudsen while I worked at the University of Idaho, from as early as 1970 and contact off/on until fall of 2017. I worked in the Pedology Laboratory and was helping her get information on some monoliths collected and in the Fosberg Monolith Collection at University of Idaho. I had sent her soil descriptions and monolith cards as she was working on another publication. I was busy in the spring of 2018 cleaning out 50-years of soil archives and I remembered I had not heard from...

I met Ruthann through my parents Leo and Lela Ames when all of us were early members of the NOW (National Organization of Women) chapter at the University of Idaho in the early '70s. I kept in touch on and off over the years. She was the one who taught me to honor myself (after my divorce) by giving myself roses. Last year I reconnected with her after having not been in touch for many years. She lent a painting by my father to hang in three exhibitions I had organized of his work. She drove...

I don't remember not knowing Ruthann - she was one of a handful of women archaeologists among my family's friends who served as important role models for me - I am very sorry to learn of her passing, and I will really miss her. I was so head-down finishing my PhD this spring that I missed hearing, I just found out through her obituary in "Archaeology in Montana." I really appreciated her kindness and moral support when I moved back to Montana; she was not only an excellent archaeologist, but...

I was a new graduate student at WSU in 1970 when I first met Ruthann and will never forget her words of encouragement and her guidance through the academic maze. She gave me a new perspective on what Anthropology could be about and certainly helped me broaden my horizons. I eventually went into engineering, but I will always remember her insights into understanding different cultures.

WSU-'72

I met Ruthann in 1978 and I knew that my life would be different. Until I met Ruthann, I had no female role models in archaeology. As a new employee at the University of Idaho Laboratory of Anthropology and future graduate student, I knew I had a strong role model, an intellectual equal, and an advocate. She was all of these and much more. In 1979, she assigned me to be the field director of a long distance transmission line project and my career took off from there. Over the years she...

I have known Ruthann as an archaeologist since the late 1960s, when she edited the Newsletter of Lithic Technology. We met at a Pan-Pacific Scince Congress in 1975 and kept in intermittent touch since then. Myself an archaeologist, I was constantly impressed not only by the scope of her work, but the meticulous order with which she kept her records. She was a model to the profession, and I am very sad both personally and professionally to lose her. A great lady.