Keith H. Basso

Who was Keith H. Basso?

Keith Hamilton Basso was a cultural and linguistic anthropologist noted for his study of the Western Apaches, specifically those from the community of Cibecue, Arizona. Basso was professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of New Mexico and earlier taught at the University of Arizona and Yale University.

After first studying Apache culture in 1959, Basso completed a bachelor's degree at Harvard University and the took the doctorate at Stanford University. He was the son of novelist Hamilton Basso.

Basso was awarded the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing in 1997 for his ethnography, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. The work was also the 1996 Western States Book Award Winner in Creative Nonfiction.

Basso died from cancer on August 4, 2013, at the age of 73, in Phoenix, Arizona.