David Meltzer and the Bureau of (American) Ethnology

Summary

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

It is difficult, if not downright impossible, to even begin to summarize the contributions Dave Meltzer has made to archaeology. I’ve long regarded him as the twenty-first-century heir to William Henry Holmes’s mantle. Few people have been as successful in pulling together truly interdisciplinary, as opposed to merely “multidisciplinary,” teams to solve archaeological and geoarchaeological problems. Equally significant are his numerous contributions to our knowledge of the history of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American archaeology. One thing that sets all of Dave’s work apart from that of many others is his uncanny ability to write for nonexperts. This comes through loud and clear in his writing not only for other archaeologists but for lay readers as well. Here I take a brief look at his book The Great Paleolithic War, which in my mind is the best discussion of one of the longest-running feuds in the history of American anthropology: Was there incontrovertible evidence of glacial-age humans in North America? The feud became so vicious that researchers were deliberately frightened away from discussing the topic. In many respects, that feud was not so different than the one that occurred a century later, with, not surprisingly, Dave firmly in the forefront.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51351