David J. Meltzer: The Quintessential Interdisciplinary Scientist

Summary

This is an abstract from the "2025 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of David J. Meltzer Part I" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This year’s Fryxell Award, for general interdisciplinary contributions to archaeology, has gone to David J. Meltzer. Perhaps the quickest introduction to the breadth, depth, power, and focus of Dr. Meltzer’s contributions in this realm is provided by his 2015 book, The Great Paleolithic War: How Science Forged an Understanding of America’s Ice Age Past, published by the University of Chicago Press. The title, combining science with our attempt to understand the peopling of the Americas, tells part of the story: Dr. Meltzer’s career has focused on deepening our understanding of the earliest Americans by using a remarkably broad range of tools provided us by science as a whole. How broad has that range been? The catalogue of the University of Chicago Press gives us a strong hint. In addition to placing The Great Paleolithic War alongside its famous works in the history of science, it also places it with its offerings in five different scientific disciplines: Archaeology, Geology, Paleobiology, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology. Even that, as I hope my brief review of Dr. Meltzer’s interdisciplinary accomplishments will show, omits some of the disciplinary tools he has used, and is using, to probe the oldest archaeological records provided by the Americas.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• 2025 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of David J. Meltzer Part I

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51126