 He received an Honorary Doctorate of Sciences from the University of Nevada in 1965; two Guggenheim fellowships in 1963 and 1973; a year as a fellow in the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science from 1972–1973; an award for having distinguished scholarly contributions from the Southwestern Anthropological Association in 1976; awarded the Henry R. Wagner Medal of the California Historical Society in 1977; and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973.Heizer's excavations included the Cooper-Molera Adobe Project in Monterey County, California, from 1971 to 1978.He did work in the Sacramento Valley from 1936 to 1939, and in later years at Lovelock Cave, Humboldt Cave, and Eastgate Cave, all in Nevada.