Janet E. Rafferty, (born 1947) emerita professor of anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures and senior research associate at the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State University, is a North American archaeologist. Her dissertation (1974, University of Washington) was titled "The development of the Ft. Ancient tradition in northern Kentucky". She was a faculty member at the University of Washington from 1974–1976, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale from 1976–1977; and Mississippi State University from 1977 to 2014. Upon her retirement in 2014, a scholarship was created in her name to support an undergraduate anthropology major with funding to help defray costs of attending an archaeological survey field school at Mississippi State.