At the close of AY 2002, Professor Fred Wendorf retired after 38 years as a member of the faculty at Southern Methodist University. Soon after his arrival at SMU Fred began to push the university to establish a Ph.D. program in anthropology and with characteristic doggedness he built the department into one of the best in the country. With the support of the National Science Foundation (Professor Wendorf holds the record for the highest number of grants awarded by the archaeology program at NSF), Fred has carried out pioneering archaeology in the desert regions of Egypt demonstrating that the nomads of the area developed pottery before the people along the Nile. At Nabta Playa, a depression where Wendorf and his team have found large astronomical stones, there was a great lake. From 11,000 to 5,000 years ago this areas was wet not arid, a place of pilgrimage where the nomads would gather when the rains made the region bountiful. Fred’s work on this region is synthesized in his monumental book Holocene Settlement in Egyptian Sahara: The Archaeology of Nabta Playa published in 2001 by Plenum Press. Professor Wendorf was the first member of the SMU faculty to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences (in 1987). This past fall, Fred made a donation of his archaeological collections to the British Museum, an institution that houses the largest collection of pharaonic antiquities outside of Cairo.
The Department made a new hire this year. In the fall of 2002 we will be welcoming Dr. Carolyn Smith-Morris, a medical anthropologist who received her degree from the University of Arizona in 2001. Dr. Smith-Morris is a specialist on Native-American health issues. She has carried out research on diabetes among the Pima Indians on the Gila River. We will also be welcoming Dr. Michael Cannon as a post-doc, working with Dr. David Meltzer. Dr. Cannon will offer a graduate seminar on zooarchaeology in the fall and an undergraduate course in the spring.
We had several important
lecturers this year. In the fall, the Department welcomed medical
anthropologist Joan Cassell,
research associate in the Department of Surgery at Washington University
School of Medicine. Dr. Cassell delivered a Scott-Hawkins lecture titled
“Stories, Moral Judgment and Medical Care in an Intensive Care Unit.”
Professor Linda Whiteford
(University of South Florida) was this year’s George and Mary Foster
Distinguished Lecturer in Cultural Anthropology. Whiteford spoke about the
“Cuban Health Experiment at the 21st Century.” Whiteford is a
well-known medical anthropologist who has carried out fieldwork in Cuba,
Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic. She was also recently elected the
President of the Society for Applied Anthropology. The Pig Roast speaker was Lawrence
Rosen (Princeton), a well-known legal anthropologist who has conducted
field research in the Middle East. Lawrence chose to speak about “The
Cultural Defense Plea and the Legal Concept of Culture”. With the help of
SMU’s News and Information Office we were able to get Rosen onto a KERA
radio show a few days before the lecture.
FACULTY NEWS
Ben Wallace published a new edition of his book Good Roots. This agro-forestry project in the Philippines is supported by Caltex. Ben has also become a mystery writer. His new book, The Pinoy Connection, set in the Philippines, was published in August of 2001. Carolyn Sargent has been appointed to the senior NSF panel for the Cultural Anthropology Program. She is also standing for election to the Executive Board of the Society for Medical Anthropology. Finally, Southwestern Medical School has asked her to sit on their IRB board. Lewis Binford received a Godbey Lecture Series author’s award for his book Constructing Frames of Reference: an Analytical Method for Archaeological Theory Building Using Ethnographic and Environmental Data Sets (University of California Press). Tony Marks and his student Katherine Monigal published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that reports on research with 50 tools from two sites in the Crimea that date between 32,000 and 80,000 years ago. The research suggests that Neanderthal used tools in a diverse ways to procure a varied diet.
Garth Sampson continued his service on the NSF Archaeology panel as a reviewer. He also continues his work on the Zeekoe Valley archaeological project, a project designed to detect changes in habitat and sociopolitical boundaries that constrained the movements of prehistoric and historical hunter-foragers in an open, semi-desert environment.
Mike Adler published several essays (“Late Anasazi”, “Cliff Palace”, “Arroyo Hondo Pueblo”, “Pot Creek Pueblo”, and “Sand Canyon Pueblo” in the Encyclopedia of Prehistory (Plenum, 2001). He continues his field research at the Chaves site in New Mexico.
David Freidel made preliminary field visits to the El Peru site in Peten, Guatemala. He has received support from the Jerome E. Glick Foundation of St. Louis for this project. David was quoted in the New York Times in association with several archaeological discoveries among the Maya including a set of murals discovered in Guatemala (March 14, 2002).
Caroline Brettell completed
her year as President of the Faculty Senate. She also launched into the
NSF-funded project on new immigration in the DFW-metroplex. Several graduate
students are supported on this project. She participated in a School of
American Research Advanced Seminar on “Anthropology and Contemporary
Immigration” delivering a paper titled “Bringing the City Back In: Cities
as Contexts for Immigrant Incorporation.” She continues her service on a
study section for the National Institutes of Health.
David
Meltzer participated in an invited Presidential session at the annual
meeting of the American Anthropological Association titled “On reconciling,
linguistic, biological/genetic, and cultural evidence of group origins.” He
continues his research at Paleoindian sites supported by the Quest
Archaeological Research Program. Van
Kemper continues to teach in both the Perkins School of Theology and the
Department. He has several essays forthcoming in the Encyclopedia
of Urban Cultures and two published in The
Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures.
Ron Wetherington continues as the director of the Center for Teaching Effectiveness. Ron will again be teaching the field school at Fort Burgwin and is deeply involved in the 150th anniversary celebration of the Fort.
Bill Pulte remains as Director of the Master of Bilingual Education program. David Wilson is working on the second edition of Indigenous South Americans of the Past and Present (Westview). Victoria Lockwood is completing her book Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender and Development in the Tahitian Islands. She also chaired the Commission on the Status of Women this year.
OTHER ACTIVITIES AND NEWS
John Phinney, our ISEM librarian and ‘walking bibliography of all things anthropological', was awarded the “Employee of the Year Award” from the SMU Libraries. Congratulations to John. In the spring Professors Meltzer and Brettell participated in a “professionalization workshop” sponsored by Naryan Bhat, Dean of Research and Graduate Studies. We began the year with a plaque unveiling in the southeast corner of the 4th floor of the Heroy Building honoring our two National Academy of Sciences members. The corner is now “National Academy of Sciences Corner.
WEB SITE NEWS
The Website for the
Department (http://www.smu.edu/anthro)
has been redesigned. Thanks to Professor David Meltzer for spearheading this
project. We invite everyone to check it out.
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT NEWS
The winner of the 2002 Edward I. and Peggy C. Fry Award is Tim Jaster. Tim, who will graduate in December of 2002, plans to continue on to graduate school in anthropology. Tim, who is double majoring in anthropology and journalism, devotes a good deal of his time to being a Daily Campus reporter and editor. Kathy Rome completed an internship with Wendy Lopez and Associates. Lindsay Young received a research supplement for undergraduates award from the National Science Foundation. She will be working with Dr. Brettell in the fall on the immigration project, focusing particularly on immigration and health issues.
GRADUATE
STUDENT NEWS
The
following students completed dissertations in AY00-01: Tara Skipper “To Deserve One Another’s Confidence: An Historical
Ethnography of Company, Community and Deindustrialization in a South Alabama
Town (Brettell); David
Johnstone “The Ceramics of Yaxana, Yucatan” (Freidel): Timothy
Benner “Contextual Issues in the Definition and Measurement of Poverty:
Poverty in the Rural Philippines (Lockwood
and Wallace); Katherine Nelson “The
Container Complex: Ethnographic and Environmental Patterning”
(Wendorf); David Jurney
“Diaspora of the Alabama-Koasati Indians Across Southeastern North
America” (Sampson); Russell Gould
“Logic and the Analysis of Function in Historical Archaeology” (Binford); Joseph Miller “A Macroarchaeological Examination of the New Mexico
Archaic with Implications for the Transition to Food Production” (Binford);
We are very proud of
two of our Ph.D. students, Catrina Whitley and
Michelle Rich, who received
three-year research fellowships from the National Science Foundation. These
fellowships carry a generous stipend and full tuition. Catrina is working in
archaeology under Michael Adler, focusing on human skeletal remains and burial
practices in the Southwest. Michelle is working under the direction of David
Freidel and will be going to Guatemala with him in the spring of 2003. Ben
Passmore and Melissa Nibungco were the recipients of doctoral dissertation improvement grants from
the National Science Foundation. Ben will be leaving for the Czech Republic in
the summer of 2002 to study how workers are adapting to the changing workplace
in the post-Socialist world and Melissa will begin a project this summer on
tuberculosis and gender in the Phillippines. Melissa also received a
Fulbright. In November of 2001 Arushi
Sinha won the Polgar Prize from the
Society for Medical Anthropology for the best article published in Medical Anthropology Quarterly in 2000. Her article was titled “An
Overview of Telemedicine: The Virtual Gaze of Health Care in the Next
Century.” Katherine Nelson,
who received her Ph.D. this year is moving to New Orleans this summer to take
a job at Tulane. Shenqian Chen received
a grant from the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man to travel to China
to collect data for his dissertation. Chen and his wife had a baby this
spring. Tara Bond-Freeman also
had a baby in April and is taking a little time off from working on Professor
Binford’s NSF project. The Paul Steed Travel Awards of
2001-02 went to John Seebach,
for a poster “Dealing with Multicomponent Scatters: The Shirey Flats Site,
Ward County, Texas” that was presented at the 72nd meeting of the
Texas Archaeological Society; Tara Bond Freeman
for her paper “Research and Ceramic Analysis at Chunchucmol, Northwestern
Yucatan, Mexico” presented at the Maya Research Symposium; John
Seebach for his paper “Sittin’ on the
Edge of the Plains: Late Paleoindian Occupation at Shirey Flats” presented
at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology; Coleen
Hanratty for her paper “K’in Tan: The
Rise and Fall of the Non-Royal Elite Population of Blue Creek, Belize”
presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There
were 23 different sessions at the SAA meetings this year with one or more
faculty, current, or past students of SMU participating.
The winners of the 2002 NSF Training Grant Awards for Pre-dissertation research are: Portia Belo—to work on disability in Ecuador; Peggy Varghese—to work on attitudes toward HIV/AIDS in Kerala, India; and Samantha Martin—to work on HIV/AIDS among Native American populations in the Tucson area.
Tim Dalby was involved in an archaeological project that analyzed the skeletal remains found along the Trinity river that are at least 4000 years old. The Trinity River in Dallas may prove to be a rich archaeological site for Native-American remains.
Keith Eppich published “The Progress of Culture” in Lore (Volume 1.3), a journal of rhetoric, writing, and culture.
ALUMNI
NEWS
Let
us know where you are. Join the Anthropology Alumni E-mail Directory. We hope
this listing of alumni and email addresses will encourage communication
between members of the SMU community. To have your information posted, please
send an e-mail message to scarroll@mail.smu.edu
and give us your name (maiden name if applicable), class year, degree and
email address.
Brit Bousman (PhD 1991), currently the Director of Southwest Texas State’s Center for Archaeological Studies has been working on archaeological artifacts dating to 11,000 years ago and pertaining to some of the earliest hunters and gatherers in the upper San Marcos River. David Crass (Ph.D. 1990) has been the State Archaeologist in Georgia since 1998. He has been concentrating on developing a long-term strategy for education and protection efforts. He also finds time to publish. He writes “My education at SMU was the best thing that could have happened to me in preparation for this job, even Garth Sampson’s “Science and the Human Past”. Paul Thacker (Ph.D. 1996) has just been awarded an NSF Grant and a Wenner Gren Coundation Grant to study the Upper Paleolithic in Portugal. Barbara Lomonoco (Ph.D. 1995) received tenure at Transylvania University and won the Bingham Teaching Award. She also has a grant to work in Sicily in the Aeoloian Island during the summer of 2002. Lisa Henry (PhD 2000) and Doug Henry (PhD 2000) have both been appointed to tenure-track positions as Assistant Professors in anthropology at the University of North Texas. Susan Quadrini (MA Medical 1996) was filmed as part of a show "Maternity Ward" on the Learning Channel. They spent 6 weeks at Baylor following her around. Susan and her husband are also expecting a baby this summer. Marsha Ogilvie (BS 1970), who lost her eyesight in her 20s, was covered in a story in the Albuquerque Journal on June 5, 2001. Marsha completed a Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico. She has been developing ways for the blind to learn about archaeology, human evolution, and marine life in a museum. Ogilvie is employed not only at the Maxwell Museum of the University of New Mexico but also as a forensic anthropologist. Mohsen Mobasher (Ph.D. 1996) has taken a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Houston.
SELECTED FACULTY PUBLICATIONS, 2001-2002
Adler, Michael, “Local Systems and Regional Economies,” IN Examining the Course of Southwest Archaeology, D. Phillips and L. Sebastian, eds, pp. 95-104. New Mexico Archaeological Council, 2001.
Brettell, Caroline, “Migration” IN The History of the European Family, Volume 2, Family Life in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1789-1913, David Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli eds., pp. 229-247. Yale Press, 2002.
Freidel, David, “Kingship in the Late Preclassic Maya Lowlands: The Instruments and Places of Ritual Power,” IN The Ancient Civilizxations of Mesoamerica: A Reader, Michael smith and Marilyn Masson, eds., pp. 422-440. Blackwells, 2001.
Kemper, Robert V., Chronicling Cultures: Long-Term Field Research in Anthropology. Altamira Press, 2002.
Lockwood,
Victoria, Globalization in Pacific
Island Societies. Prentice-Hall, 2002.
Meltzer,
David, “Why we still don’t know when the first people came to
North America,” IN On Being First:
Cultural Innovation and Environmental Consequences of First Peoplings.
Proceedingsof the 31st Annual Chacmool Conference, pp. 1-25, 2001.
Sampson,
Garth, “An Acheulian Settlement Pattern in the upper Karoo region of
South Africa,” IN A Very Remote Period Indeed: Papers on the Paleolithic Presented to
Derek Roe, Sarah Milliken and Jill Cook, eds, pp 28-36, Oxbow Books, 2001.
Sargent,
Carolyn, “Birth in Cross-Cultural Perspective” Medical
Anthropology, Carol and Melvin Ember eds, pp. 2-25. Plenum, 2001.
Wilson, David, “Hallucinogenic
Plants in Indigenous South American Cultures,” IN Contemporary
Cultures and Societies of Latin America: A Reader in the Social Anthropology
of Middle and South America, Dwight
Heath, ed., pp. 480-484. Waveland Press, 2001.
GIFTS TO THE
DEPARTMENT
We
would like to acknowledge the following generous gifts to the Department:
Janet Huntley, for the purchase of the Nariokotome Skeleton (H. Erectus WT
15000, W. Turkana); Jay Vaster (Lawson Valentine Foundation), Ken Griffith,
Knowles Cornwell (K and B Sales), and Mr. and Mrs. James Zurn (Erie Community
Foundation) for support of Dr. Adler’s research at the Chaves site; H.
Michael Howell to the general fund; Dr. Mary Moore Free to the Dwight A and
Mary Moore Free Endowment.
STUDENT ENRICHMENT FUND
We would appreciate any
contribution you can make to our student enrichment fund. These funds are used
to assist our graduate and undergraduate students. Donations (for any amount)
should be sent to the attention of the Chair, Department of Anthropology,
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275-0336.