Awards Presented at the 116th Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America

See all awards and past winners on the Archaeological Institute of America’s website.

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The 116th Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America was held in conjunction with the 146th Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 8–11 January 2015.

On 9 January, Andrew Moore, President, presented the Institute’s 50th Annual Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement to C. Brian Rose, and the Martha and Artemis Joukowsky Distinguished Service Award to Connie Rodriguez. Jodi Magness, First Vice President, presented the 34th Annual Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology to T. Douglas Price, and the 19th Annual Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award to Nancy T. de Grummond of Florida State University. Carla Antonaccio, Vice President for Research and Academic Affairs, presented the 26th Annual James R. Wiseman Book Award to Elspeth Dusinberre for Empire, Authority, and Autonomy in Achaemenid Anatolia (Cambridge and New York 2013). Jane Buikstra, Center for American Archaeology, presented the 5th Annual Felicia A. Holton Book Award to Allan Meyers for Outside the Hacienda Walls: The Archaeology of Plantation Peonage in Nineteenth-Century Yucatán (Tucson 2012). Jodi Magness presented the 2nd Annual Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology to Charles E. Jones for The Ancient World Online (http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com). Laetitia La Follette, Vice President for Cultural Heritage, presented the AIA’s Outstanding Public Service Award to Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, the Conservation and Heritage Management Award to Elizabeth Pye, and the Award for Best Practices in Site Preservation to Christopher Tuttle and the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management initiative. The texts of these award citations are printed below.

Jodi Magness also announced Rachel DeLozier (University of Arizona) and Eleni Hasaki (University of Arizona) as the recipients of the Best Poster Award for “Bronze Age Terracotta Statues of Ayia Irini, Kea: An Experimental Reconstruction and Technical Examination.” Elizabeth Mauer (Boston University) received the Best Poster Designed by a Student Award for “A Chemical Investigation of Cedar Oil in the Hellenistic Levant.” Andrew Moore presented the Graduate Student Paper Award for 2014 to Christopher Hale (University of Melbourne).

On 10 January, at the 136th Meeting of Council, the following were elected to the AIA Governing Board: Ann Santen, Vice President for Societies; Elie Abemayor, David Adam, and John Yarmick, General Trustees; Mark Lawall, Kathleen Lynch, and Sarah Parcak, Academic Trustees; and James Jansson, Society Trustee. The title of Vice President for Professional Responsibilities was renamed Vice President for Cultural Heritage.

On 9–11 January, 456 papers and posters were presented in 75 sessions. Six workshops were also held. Abstracts for these are printed in the 116th Annual Meeting Abstracts (Boston 2014), which is available online or in print (see the Annual Meeting section of the Archaeological Institute of America’s website [www.archaeological.org] or contact the AIA for information).

Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement

C. Brian Rose

The Archaeological Institute of America is proud to award the 2015 Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement to C. Brian Rose.

Rose is perhaps best known for his efforts while President of the AIA (2007–2010) to provide cultural heritage training to U.S. military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. By raising soldiers’ sensitivity to their fields of operation as human landscapes with a rich cultural heritage, he humanized the terrible face of bloody conflict and demonstrated the importance of archaeology to the core values of our society. By training American servicepeople to appreciate the culture and history of the places where they had been deployed, Rose made a singularly important contribution to the greater good.

Rose’s record of achievement in archaeology includes much more. He has made multiple and major contributions to the AIA, the American Academy in Rome, and the American Research Institute in Turkey. He has served as deputy director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and currently serves as the curator-in-charge of that institution’s Mediterranean Section. He has chaired both the Interdepartmental Graduate Group in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World at the University of Pennsylvania and the Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati, historically two of the most important programs in classical archaeology in the United States.

Rose has been an energetic and highly successful field researcher, directing or codirecting three major projects in Turkey—first the post–Bronze Age excavations at Troy, then the Granicus River Valley Archaeological Survey Project, and now the Gordion Archaeological Project. In connection with these initiatives, he has authored or edited a mass of reports and synthesizing publications that have established him as a leading figure in the archaeology of Anatolia. His original area of specialization, however, was Roman sculpture, and over the course of his career he has carved out a position as a highly influential scholar in this field as well, authoring several important publications.

What is more, Rose has been a highly influential educator. He has not only trained and inspired numerous students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, first at the University of Cincinnati and now at the University of Pennsylvania, but in many ways he has served as the face of our discipline beyond the confines of the academy, delivering countless public lectures to audiences of every imaginable sort and making numerous appearances in the popular media. His abilities as a public speaker are legendary, and he possesses a special gift for gauging, engaging, and holding an audience.

In recognition of this vast, varied, and exceptional record of achievement, the AIA takes great pride and pleasure in awarding the 2015 Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement to C. Brian Rose.

Martha and Artemis Joukowsky Distinguished Service Award

Connie Rodriguez

The Archaeological Institute of America is pleased to present the 2015 Martha and Artemis Joukowsky Distinguished Service Award to Connie Rodriguez.

Rodriguez serves as the head of the Department of Classical Studies at Loyola University in New Orleans and is the long-time president of the New Orleans Society of the AIA. Since she arrived in New Orleans in 1988, she has served the Society tirelessly in all capacities, from coordinator to chauffer. When the national meetings for the AIA were held in New Orleans in 1992 and 2003, Rodriguez worked as the liaison between Loyola and the Society to help staff the registration desk and organize student volunteers. For the 2015 Annual Meeting, she is again fully involved in the local participation effort.

When Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in August 2005, Loyola shut its doors for the coming semester. Despite the loss of her home and many personal belongings, Rodriguez refused to allow the local Society to wither away like so many New Orleans institutions. Instead, a reinvigorated Society emerged with Rodriguez at the heart of its activities.

As her nomination letter attests, “to suggest that the New Orleans Society of the AIA would not exist were it not for Connie’s continued leadership and effort is not a stretch. Through nearly 25 years of service to the New Orleans Society, Connie has served the organization in ways large and small.”

The Archaeological Institute of America lauds Connie Rodriguez’s dedication and is proud to present her with the 2015 Martha and Artemis Joukowsky Distinguished Service Award.

Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology

T. Douglas Price

The Archaeological Institute of America presents the 2015 Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology to T. Douglas Price in recognition of his distinguished record of contributions to the advancement of archaeological science.

Price is an emeritus member (Weinstein Professor of European Archaeology) of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Department of Anthropology. During a career spanning almost four decades, Price has had an enormous influence on the field of archaeological science and is known for his work on archaeological chemistry. He is a Fulbright fellow and has won numerous awards for teaching and research. He has held academic positions in Germany, Scotland, Sweden, and Denmark, where he has conducted fieldwork since the 1970s.

In a series of papers based on regional surveys and excavations, Price demonstrated that the northern European Mesolithic was not a “dark” transitional age but rather was characterized by technological sophistication and revolutionary social behaviors. Mesolithic hunter-collectors actively resisted, sometimes violently, the first farmers in northern Europe, who appeared to have migrated into the region. To determine whether these farmers were indeed migrants and from where, and with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), American Philosophical Society, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Price developed new isotopic methods for tracking human movement through bone chemistry, based on strontium and, later, barium. In the late 1980s, again with funding from NSF, he established the Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Through the 1990s and 2000s, in a series of landmark papers, he and his colleagues and students applied these methods, with greater and greater precision, to questions of migration and diffusion throughout the world: in central Europe, the Balkans, Iceland, Mexico, the Andes, the American Southwest, and, most recently, China.

Price is a prolific writer. He has authored or coauthored, edited or coedited, nearly 30 books, including the very popular textbook Images of the Past (with Gary M. Feinman), now in its seventh edition (New York 2013). He also pioneered educational computer simulations with Adventures in Fugawiland (with Anne Birgitte Gebauer) (Mountain View, Calif. 1989). He has authored or coauthored more than 150 scholarly articles and given hundreds of presentations. Many of these have been on bone chemistry, including isotopic analysis for dietary reconstruction, but Price has also written extensively on pottery and soil chemistry. He is not simply a “technician,” though. He has had a strong and lasting impact on several theoretical debates in archaeology. These include the origins of social complexity, human settlement and the environment, “complex” hunting and gathering, and the place of archaeology in anthropology departments at academic institutions in the United States. His field and laboratory research have revolutionized our understanding of the European Mesolithic, the transition to agriculture, and human migration throughout the world.

Moreover, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Price instructed thousands of undergraduate and graduate students. Before retiring in 2009, he advised 21 Ph.D. dissertations, which spanned the globe, many of them in the field of archaeological science. In this way, he has had a secondary impact on the practice of science in archaeology by training a new generation of archaeological scientists.

Price’s work in archaeology and archaeological science looms large and is felt on a global scale. In the words of one of his students, Michael Galaty, he “is an archaeological scientist, but first and foremost, he is a student of the past. He believes strongly that we can learn important lessons from our ancestors and has worked hard to make archaeology accessible to the masses. In giving T. Douglas Price this award, the AIA will salute a great archaeologist, educator, scientist, and citizen of the planet.”

For these reasons, we honor T. Douglas Price with the 2015 Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology.

Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award

Nancy T. de Grummond

The Archaeological Institute of America is pleased to present the 2015 Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award to Nancy Thomson de Grummond, M. Lynette Thompson Professor of Classics and Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University (FSU).

A widely respected authority on Etruscan archaeology, culture, and religion, a three-time recipient of FSU’s University Teaching Award, and the winner of the inaugural Excellence in Teaching Award from the Alpha of Florida chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, de Grummond embodies the ideal of the scholar-teacher, bringing the immediacy of new ideas and discoveries directly into the classroom. In turn, she instills in her students a passion for original research. The Laboratory for Undergraduate Research on the Decipherment of Ancient Scripts (LURDAS), which she established at FSU, has regularly attracted some of the university’s best and brightest undergraduates, and with good reason; it is designed to promote deep engagement with primary material, particularly Etruscan texts and sigla preserved on archaeological artifacts.

For more than 30 years, one of her most effective classrooms has been the field project at the Etruscan site of Cetamura del Chianti, where hundreds of students have learned firsthand the joys of archaeological discovery and the rigors of interpretation. Many have spoken of Cetamura as a life-changing event. They recount how, each year, de Grummond throws her heart and soul into the experience, managing every detail in the field, in the lab, at the regional museums—even weaving that most venerable and potent of teaching tools, storytelling, into the fabric of her students’ experience by devising impromptu oral mystery tales in daily installations. She often makes herself available to students far into the evening. “She refuses to slow down,” says one colleague. “This is what she loves to do; this is her life. She can rest later.”

But if de Grummond ever rests from her labors, we cannot say when or where. She is a beloved teacher, advisor, and mentor across the entire spectrum of her university’s student body. Over the course of her career, she has directed five senior theses, 59 master’s papers or theses, and 12 dissertations; she has served as a reader for countless more. She has shepherded generations of her undergraduates on to graduate school and academic careers. In any given fall semester, more than 650 undergraduates enroll in her foundational Ancient Myth East and West course, which is now taught by a team of instructors under her supervision. Her legendary “I, Claudius” course was providing comparative analysis of primary texts and film long before the practice became fashionable, and it remains a student favorite to this day. Its special attention to the visual—dining customs, clothing, armor, architecture, movement, and gesture—adds a delightfully tangible dimension to the comparative analysis of historical texts and narratives and embodies her penchant for attracting and engaging students in multiple dimensions at once.

In the words of one of her admiring flock, “amidst all the recognitions and accolades that one could mention, the greatest testament to Prof. de Grummond’s effectiveness as an educator must be her students, who continue to take class upon class with her and to hold her in the highest esteem.” A prolific public speaker, whether on the AIA circuit, at universities, at conferences, or in outreach presentations, she never leaves her infectious enthusiasm at home. A colleague attests that wherever de Grummond goes, “there is no small audience for her…. She has always striven to make the field of archaeology accessible and attractive to everyone.” And in that, as in every other dimension of her professional life, she has succeeded in spades.

For all these reasons, the Archaeological Institute of America presents Nancy Thomson de Grummond with the 2015 Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award.

James R. Wiseman Book Award

Elspeth Dusinberre

The Archaeological Institute of America is pleased to present the 2015 James R. Wiseman Book Award to Elspeth Dusinberre for Empire, Authority, and Autonomy in Achaemenid Anatolia (Cambridge and New York 2013).

Dusinberre’s book synthesizes the huge body of scholarship on Achaemenid Anatolia through a new theoretical lens of authority and autonomy to address a core issue: How pervasive was Persian control in Anatolia?

This question has relevance not only for Achaemenid Anatolia but also for studies of imperial power worldwide. Rather than employing the world-systems theory dichotomy of center (or core) vs. periphery, Dusinberre argues that there was a lack of a continual, direct centralized imperial control in the satrapies of Anatolia. Her insightful interpretation of the material evidence in a series of thematic chapters—including ones on drinking and eating, dealing with the dead, and worshiping—suggests that the impact of the Persian empire on Anatolian peoples was perhaps stronger than it might appear.

Dusinberre argues that the local Anatolian elites played a large role in the success of Persian control by adopting Persian behaviors in many realms, such as in dining and drinking patterns. She has succeeded in bringing the people of Anatolia to the forefront in her study of Persian power.

For all these reasons, Elspeth Dusinberre’s Empire, Authority, and Autonomy in Achaemenid Anatolia is a most worthy recipient of the 2015 James R. Wiseman Book Award.

Felicia A. Holton Book Award

Allan Meyers

The Archaeological Institute of America and the Center for American Archaeology present the 2015 Felicia A. Holton Book Award for a major work of nonfiction written for the general public to Allan Meyers for Outside the Hacienda Walls: The Archaeology of Plantation Peonage in Nineteenth-Century Yucatán (Tucson 2012).

In this book, Meyers examines hacienda life, looking in particular at the lives and livelihoods of the debt peons who provided the plantation workforce for the Tabi sugarcane plantation. He weaves into his narrative the story of how this plantation became an object of archaeological inquiry, contributing to his own development as an archaeologist.

Written in an engaging style and providing a good example of how archaeology can be used to support modern historical and ethnological research, Outside the Hacienda Walls is a most worthy recipient of the 2015 Felicia A. Holton Book Award.

Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology

The Ancient World Online

The Archaeological Institute of America is pleased to present the 2015 Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology to the Ancient World Online (http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com).

The Ancient World Online (AWOL) is a project of Charles E. Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities at the Pattee Library, Pennsylvania State University. AWOL began with a series of entries on the site of the Ancient World Bloggers Group. It was moved to its current platform in 2009. The goal of the project is simple but significant: to “notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world.” This blog and daily newsletter serves as an informative and concise digest, and it has been remarkably successful in its efforts to disseminate knowledge and promote open access resources. AWOL has provided archaeological information to more than 1.1 million unique visitors since its inception in 2009, nearly a quarter of whom have returned to the site for more.

AWOL is a most deserving recipient of the 2015 Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology.

Outstanding Public Service Award

Gregory Annenberg Weingarten

The Archaeological Institute of America is pleased to present the 2015 Outstanding Public Service Award to Gregory Annenberg Weingarten.

As vice president and director of the Annenberg Foundation, Annenberg Weingarten has long demonstrated his devotion to the preservation and presentation of visual and material culture. He and the foundation have funded exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Tate Gallery, and the Centre Pompidou. Annenberg Weingarten also supported an innovative initiative at the Musée du Louvre that created educational tools to introduce children to the museum’s collections. He holds degrees from Stanford University and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris.

Not only has Annenberg Weingarten demonstrated a lifelong appreciation of and commitment to the study and preservation of works of archaeological and art historical value, he has undertaken an act of extraordinary personal generosity in support of those values. In December 2013, he purchased 27 katsinam sacred to the Hopi and three artifacts sacred to the San Carlos Apache for the express purpose of repatriating them. The artifacts were part of a large lot of Native American artifacts made available for sale at the Estimations & Ventes aux Enchères auction house in Paris. Their sale had been contested in the courts by the Hopi and the U.S. Embassy, which had asked France to intervene to prevent the sale in accordance with its endorsement of the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Though the materials had long been in private collections, their sacred nature meant that they were of contemporary cultural relevance to the Hopi and San Carlos Apache. When the courts did not take action to stop the sale, Annenberg Weingarten worked anonymously and secretly to purchase the artifacts. Thanks to his efforts, they were returned to the tribes in September 2014.

The Archaeological Institute of America is pleased to present the 2015 Outstanding Public Service Award to Gregory Annenberg Weingarten for his extraordinary work in protecting world heritage and artifacts sacred to the Hopi and San Carlos Apache tribes.

Conservation and Heritage Management Award

Elizabeth Pye

The Archaeological Institute of America presents the 2015 Conservation and Heritage Management Award to Elizabeth Pye, emeritus professor at the University College London Institute of Archaeology. Pye’s legacy includes groundbreaking efforts to transform the field of objects conservation into a science-based discipline. She has also taught, mentored, and inspired students from around the world for more than four decades.

In addition to making important scientific and technical contributions, Pye established a new intellectual framework for teaching conservation and has become one of the United Kingdom’s foremost conservation educators. Her approach, grounded in scientific knowledge and a philosophical and ethical framework, focuses on community-minded, accessible, and socially responsible conservation. Countries around the world owe Pye a debt of gratitude for populating their museums, art galleries, and excavations with trained conservation staff—many of whom have themselves gone on to organize or contribute to training courses in their own countries.

It is not only for the years of dedication to her students that Pye deserves recognition. She has also worked with conservation professionals to grow the discipline and develop national standards for conservation. In addition to receiving appointments to numerous national and international conservation bodies and committees, she was instrumental in developing training programs in sub-Saharan Africa, leading to considerable improvements in the conditions of many museum collections in that region.

During the nomination process, Alice Paterakis, a conservator and member of the AIA Conservation and Site Preservation Committee, said that “there are few people in the world who are qualified as both archaeologist and conservator. [Pye’s] many years of experience promoting the integration between the two make her an ideal candidate for this award.” Committee member Nancy Wilkie noted that Pye’s receipt of the award would be “a well-deserved recognition for an outstanding person in the field.”

For all these reasons, the Archaeological Institute of America is pleased to present the 2015 Conservation and Heritage Management Award to Elizabeth Pye.

Award for Best Practices in Site Preservation

Christopher Tuttle and the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management Initiative

The Archaeological Institute of America presents the 2015 Award for Best Practices in Site Preservation to Christopher Tuttle and the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management (TWLCRM) initiative.

The TWLCRM initiative was launched in 2009 as a cooperative project by the American Center of Oriental Research, the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, and the Petra Archaeological Park to rescue the Temple of the Winged Lions, a majestic Nabataean temple built on a promontory overlooking Petra’s city center. The Temple of the Winged Lions was never thoroughly conserved or restored. As a result, the building’s structural elements suffered severe deterioration from wind, water, and use-related erosion; solar-radiation exposure; rising damp and salt efflorescence; geological action; and vandalism.

The initiative, directed by Tuttle, was developed to stabilize, conserve, and protect the monumental temple and its precinct; rehabilitate the surrounding landscape; develop and implement a comprehensive presentation strategy for the temple and its environs; publish the data derived from both the original excavation and the new project; develop guidelines and manuals for different aspects of cultural resource management work; and build local capacity for undertaking cultural resource management efforts.

The project employs a holistic, grassroots model that emphasizes a social-engagement approach that directly involves members of the local communities in nearly all aspects of the work. More than 250 local people have participated in the initiative. About 50% of local team members have been women—a major innovation for work at Petra.

The Archaeological Institute of America hopes that the TWLCRM initiative’s efforts will serve as an inspiration to others as they look for ways to preserve archaeological heritage. It is an honor to present the 2015 Award for Best Practices in Site Preservation to Christopher Tuttle and the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management initiative.

* To view all awards and past winners, see the Archaeological Institute of America’s website.