Prof. Ronald Edward Hicks died June, 19, 2025, at the age of 84.
He was born Aug. 26, 1940, the son of Winfield S. and E. Genevia Clements Hicks in Chicago, Illinois, but always considered Kingman, Indiana, where he grew up on his maternal grandparents’ farm, to be his hometown. He graduated from Kingman High School and Purdue University, where he majored in international relations with a math minor.
Receiving a commission as an officer in the U.S. Navy upon graduation from Purdue, he served on active duty in the Pacific aboard the USS Seminole and in Naval Reserve units in New York and Philadelphia, reaching the rank of lieutenant commander before transferring to the standby reserve.
He also worked as an editor in New York and Philadelphia, including three years as managing editor of the American Anthropologist, before receiving a Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship for dissertation research in Ireland and completing his PhD in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. He was both proud of and surprised by the fact that a boy from a small farm in western Indiana could receive a doctorate from an Ivy League university. He joined the faculty at Ball State University in 1976, where he remained for 40 years, during which he founded what is now the Applied Anthropology Laboratory, served as first director of the Center for International Programs, and served for eight years as the chair of the Department of Anthropology.
In addition to numerous publications on Irish prehistory and mythology, Indiana prehistory, and archaeoastronomy, he served for a number of years on the editorial boards for Archaeology Magazine and Archaeoastronomy. Between 1971 and 2017 he spent about 10 percent of his time doing fieldwork in Ireland, where his research focused on evidence for the pre-Christian religion and its relationship to the agricultural calendar and the landscape. He considered his most important work to be his study of the sídhe, the “hollow hills” thought to be the homes of the ancient Irish gods. He felt as at home in Ireland as in Indiana and was at his happiest when wandering Irish fields in search of remains of pre-Christian sacred sites or sharing time with his children (preferably both). He also directed two seasons of excavation at Mounds State Park in Indiana.
He was always interested in another adventure, whether strolling the streets of Kamakura in Japan, taking a three-day boat trip through the Three Gorges of the Yangtze in China, wandering the outback of Australia’s Cape York peninsula in search of aboriginal rock art, visiting the sites of fossil human discoveries in South Africa, or many others.
Dr. Hicks is survived by his wife, Robin; his son, Geoffrey of Bloomington; his daughters, Gwendolyn (Katie Neighbours) of Indianapolis and Morgan (Jackson Crantford) of Bloomington; and grandson Henry of Muncie.
He was preceded in death by his parents; his beloved son, Cameron; his sister, Carolyn; and his step-sister, Joyce Gibson Maxey.
He was a devoted and caring father — generous to a fault, with a laugh so contagious it lit up every room. All who knew and loved him will miss him dearly.
There will be a gathering of friends and family at Sanders Funeral Care, 203 S. First St., Kingman, on Monday, June 23 from 1:30 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. Burial will follow at Kingman Fraternal Cemetery.
Share memories and condolences online at www.SandersFuneralCare.com.
