Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper will explore the interconnections between the institutionalization of new academic disciplines like anthropology, archaeology, geography, and history in the US in the mid-nineteenth century and the scientific, and amateur, exploration of Mesoamerica by citizens of the US and other countries. In the texts emerging from these expeditions, such as the writings of John Lloyd Stephens, Ephraim Squier, Arthur Morelet, Benjamin Moore Norman, and Georg Scherzer, Mesoamerica, and in particular Yucatan, is produced as a polytropic and multinational contact zone - a site of straightforward geopolitical interest in the case of the United States but also of a lingering Romantic cosmopolitanism in the Humboldtian vein or as a possible haven for refugees from post-1848 Europe.
While Kirsten Gruesz has recently (in ALH) argued in favour of reconceptualizing the Gulf of Mexico as a multicultural contact zone, the writings of Stephens (his two travelogues on Central America published in the 1840s) have likewise received renewed attention. Formerly viewed as either accounts of post-heroic adventures in the jungles of Yucatan and Guatemala or as reliable scientific descriptions of Maya antiquities, his travelogues are now analyzed (e.g. by Tripp Evans and Bruce Harvey) as generically hybrid documents whose polyvocality is at least in part the result of Stephens's different functions as official diplomatic envoy, as private adventurer and pioneer tourist, and as amateur scientist introducing the embryonic disciplines of American archaeology, ethnology, and geology to their "natural" terrain. The paper offered here is most concerned with this polyvocality and polytropicality. Though predominantly preoccupied with the implication of Yucatan and surrounding areas in a continentalist US-American rhetoric that switches back and forth between different generic and discursive registers (from diplomacy to history to an early form of ethnography), the paper also seeks to address contemporary views of the region that escape this discursive regime. In looking at the writings on Yucatan from a transnational and multilingual perspective, the paper wants to sketch how the scientific discourse on Mesoamerican antiquities emerges within a much more complex semantic field than is often assumed. The mid-nineteenth century discourse on Maya antiquities, though strongly subservient to the interests of empire in the US-American texts, cannot be reduced to this function. Next to domestic subversions of that discourse (in the form of parody and satire) an investigation of non-US texts shows up alternative imaginary narratives and trajectories.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript

Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: When Henry Walton Bibb escaped slavery from Trimble County, Kentucky, December 25, 1837 he began an incredible story of bondage and human resiliance that was captured in his autobiography published in 1849. A noted newspaper editor, educator and black abolitionist, Henry Bibb has provided historians a window into slavery in the Upper South and the Deep South. In August 2005 the first of five archaeological surveys began at the William Gatewood plantation near Bedford, Kentucky, the site where Henry, Malinda and Mary Frances lived and worked. With the objective of making the Henry Bibb story a major factor in Kentucky's educational system, the archaeological studies have all included high school and middle school students and members of local historical societies as well as the general public. A research team documented the Kentucky sites mentioned in Henry Bibb's book and discovered new material, some that Henry could not have known himself at the time. In addition to a play, a high school produced movie, and numerous talks, in February 2008 an elementary school in Louisville will pilot the use of the Henry Bibb story at the elementary level. The paper archives and over 2,000 artifacts will be placed at the University of Louisville. The larger dream is a national trail that will connect all of the major sites linked to the Henry Bibb story through Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Windsor, Canada, and in Louisiana, Missouri, and following Mary Bibb's story through Rhode Island, Boston and New York State.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: One might say that the debate following WWII about the relation between federal government and the social sciences was not pertinent to the discipline of classical archaeology for the minor effect that the discipline could have on the formulation of public policy. If one looks towards the direction of representational politics, however, a different story unravels.
In this paper, I examine the history of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA), one of the most prominent institutions of classical studies internationally. I argue that the underlying ideology that sustained the relationship between the government and archaeologists, who enlisted as “social scientists” supported the war efforts, persisted long after the war and exerted influence upon the School’s work. The primacy of democracy and the importance of liberal economy for world peace was best represented by the ASCSA, which draws much of its prestige from excavating the Athenian Agora, the symbolic birthplace of western democracy. Supported by governmental and private institutions the School projected to the world the image of post-war America as it was meant to be exemplified in free, scientific, non-political research.
Unlike anthropology and other disciplines, which have been subjected to this kind of scrutiny, classical archaeology and its institutions have not been studied under this light. This study opens new directions for a field, which has been criticized for nourishing ideas of western cultural superiority but its political dimensions remain in the dark; it problematizes the relation between public policy and scholarship and places it in historical perspective.

Publication Type: Traditional Presentation
Abstract: Discover the interrelationship regarding culture, history, society, the environment, and advances in American civilization. The mystery-solving begins upon unearthing a can photo in an archaeology dig. Through observation, cultural knowledge, and provided materials create a 200-year can timeline reflective of America’s values and industrialization.