Richard Daugherty

Richard Deo Daugherty (March 31, 1922 – February 22, 2014) was an American archaeologist and professor, who led the excavation of the Ozette Indian Village Archeological Site in Washington state during the 1970s. The Ozette Indian Village, which was buried and preserved in a mudslide in the 1700s, has been called "the most significant archaeological dig of the 20th century" in the Pacific Northwest. Daugherty was based at Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst in Lakehurst, New Jersey, where he flew blimps over the Atlantic to watch for potential German attacks. His dissertation studies were ultimately completed in 1953 but were at first delayed after he and several other graduate students oversaw salvage archaeological field work prior to dam construction at sites in the Columbia Plateau during the Columbia River Basin Surveys of 1946–1947.

Pacific Northwest archaeology at Washington State University Daugherty joined Washington State University (WSU)—then Washington State College—as an instructor in anthropology in 1950 until the completion of his Ph.D., after which he was appointed an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. Daugherty's early experiences growing up in the Olympic Peninsula as well as his survey and Ph.D studies set the stage for later field studies and his career, which had an enormous impact on archaeological research in the Pacific Northwest region. Daugherty led multiple projects at WSU using contract archaeology and archaeological field schools all throughout the Columbia Plateau and Pacific Northwest Coast.

While at WSU, Daugherty led the establishment of a Quaternary research studies option in 1968 and recruited a team of interdisciplinary scholars, including zooarchaeologist Carl "Gus" Gustafson, geologist Roald H. Fryxell, palynologist Peter J. Mehringer, and Frank C. Leonhardy. Other colleagues included William Andrefsky, Vaughn Bryant, Donald Collier, William Lipe, Charles M. Nelson, David G. Rice, Harvey "Pete" Rice, and Roderick Sprague. "Doc" Daugherty also mentored or served on the committee of numerous students at WSU who became important archaeologists in their own right, including Kenneth Ames, Fumi Arakawa, Corey Breternitz, Mary Collins, Dale Croes, Judith Bense, Amy Gilreath, Leslie E. Wildesen, Janet Friedman, Paul Gleeson, Steve Hackenberger, Bennie Keel, David Kirkpatrick, Ruthann Knudson, Oscar L. Mallory, Anan Raymond, Lee Sappington, Alston Thoms, Gary Wessen, Miranda Warburton, among others.

Today, there are two scholarships in Daugherty's honor at WSU, the Phyllis and Richard Daugherty Scholarship for Undergraduate Student Excellence and the Phyllis and Richard Daugherty Scholarship for Graduate Student Excellence. Collections associated with Daugherty's archaeological excavations include those housed at curation facilities at the WSU Museum of Anthropology, the Makah Museum, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation History and Archaeology Division, and the University of Idaho Bowers Laboratory. Additionally, the Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC) at WSU houses the Richard D. Daugherty Papers, which include professional papers such as "correspondence, files related to his contracting business (Western Heritage Inc.), project files, papers related to his research and writing, and collected reference material."

Contributions to cultural resource management Daugherty played a central role in shaping the role of archaeology in documenting and preserving archaeological heritage threatened by large-scale civic engineering projects. Before and after joining Washington State University as a faculty member, Daugherty took part in the Smithsonian Institution River Basin Surveys that preceded dam construction on the Columbia River. Through these surveys Daugherty, his colleagues, and students documented many important archaeological sites at Lind Coulee, Potholes Reservoir, Moses Lake, and elsewhere. In connection with this work Daugherty founded and directed the Washington Archaeological Research center at Washington State University, which became assumed an important role in early contract archaeology in the Pacific Northwest United States. Daugherty also directed the excavation of the Marmes Rockshelter, in which 10,000-year-old human remains were discovered, before the area was submerged by water due to the construction of the Lower Monumental Dam on the Snake River in 1969. Edward Eugene Claplanhoo, who was chairman of the Makah at the time, immediately recognized the significance of the discovery.

Daugherty and Ruth Kirk, a nature writer, co-authored Hunters of the Whale, which explored the early years of the Ozette Indian Village Archeological Site through 1974. Daugherty continued his work in cultural resource management over the next decades through his private consulting firm Western Heritage, publishing numerous professional reports.

Ruth Kirk and Daugherty, who were both widowed and longtime friends, married in 2007 in a wedding held in a historic replica of an Ozette-era longhouse.

Richard Daugherty died in Pullman, Washington, on February 22, 2014, at the age of 91. He was a resident of the Panorama retirement community in Lacey, Washington, at the time. His wife, Ruth Kirk, had just completed a draft of a new book on the Ozette Indian Village a few days before his death.