Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This session reflects on how American archaeology has transformed over the last ninety years. We begin with the 1930s, during the time America was still in the depths of the Great Depression and when the Society for American Archaeology was founded. Major technological and theoretical developments will be considered and how these impact the practice of American archaeology today. Individual contributions span more than one decade as appropriate.

Other Keywords
Mesoamerica • North America • Caribbean • South America

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)

  • Documents (9)
Documents
  • 1938 Excavations at Tajumulco, Guatemala (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather McClure.

    This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It all started modestly enough. A September 1937 drive to New Orleans from Santa Fe and then passage on the United Fruit Company liner Tivives with the ultimate destinations of Quirigua and Guatemala City. This small group of ten with their leader...

  • The 1950s, Postwar Resumption and Reconsiderations (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alice Kehoe.

    This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. World War II disrupted archaeology, with SAA members in uniform and travel restricted. Members resuming their careers in the late 1940s faced a more egalitarian America as thousands of men from uneducated families entered colleges on the G.I. Bill....

  • Arthur C. Parker: Archaeologist and Ethnologist in New York (1881-1955) (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Rieth.

    This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Arthur C. Parker was born in 1881 on the Cattaraugus Reservation in New York. Through out his career he served both as an advocate for Indigenous peoples and sites that they inhabited. His career was based on sites in NY, working with the New York...

  • Before and After the Carnegie Era: On the Financial and Logistical Standardization of US Archaeology (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Fernando Armstrong-Fumero.

    This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Carnegie Institution of Washington program in Mayanist archaeology presents a pivotal transition in how U.S. archaeologists financed and organized large-scale projects in Latin America. In many ways, this organization consolidated an earlier...

  • Digging a Forgotten Archeological Sequence in Amazonia: 19th Century to Mid-20th Century and Beyond. (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Roosevelt.

    This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 19th century natural scientists interested in Amazon archaeology saw the region as having a long prehistoric sequence of early hunters, sedentary ceramic fisherpeople, farmers, and complex societies. Both South American scientists and institutions...

  • The History of Caribbean Archaeology from ca. 1930 (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter E. Siegel.

    This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The history of Caribbean archaeology more or less follows the trajectory detailed by Willey and Sabloff (1980) in their review of Americanist archaeology with notable differences in timing. In this presentation, I will trace nearly 100 years of...

  • Robert F. Heizer and His Contributions to American Archaeology: 1930s to 1970s (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven James.

    This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With over 500 publications, Robert F. Heizer (1915-1979) made substantial scientific contributions to American archaeology and anthropology, particularly in California, but also in the Great Basin, Alaska, Mesoamerica, and Egypt. In 1946, he became...

  • Sample Size Matters: Advances in Archaeological Method on Large Data Recovery Projects During the 2000s and Beyond (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Donn Grenda.

    This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 1980s and 1990s, California archaeologists tried to increase the volume of soil being excavated with the goals of increasing the sample size from sparse middens and understanding internal site structure. Digging more required a way to...

  • SUNY Binghamton: The Second Wave of the New Archaeology in the 1970s and Beyond (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Claudia Chang.

    This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 1970s a group of archaeologists from the University of Chicago began their early teaching careers in the graduate Anthropology Program at SUNY-Binghamton. These professors included Margaret Conkey, John Fritz, Fred Plog,and Charles Redman....