2022
The Archaeology Division is pleased to award the 2022 Alfred Vincent Kidder Award to two distinguished archaeologists.
Rosemary A. Joyce
Rosemary A. Joyce for her major impact on Mesoamerican archaeology, in particular, and her wide impact on the field of archaeology in general, as well as positively influencing the professional lives of many students.
Dr. Joyce, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1985. Her pathbreaking work on archaeology of sex and gender is represented by articles and books including Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica (2001); Embodied Lives: Figuring Ancient Egypt and the Classic Maya (2003, with Lynn M. Meskell); Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives (2008); and Material Relations (with Julia Hendon and Jeanne Lopiparo, 2014). A curator and faculty member at Harvard University from 1985 to 1994, she moved to Berkeley in 1994 as director of the Hearst Museum of Anthropology and Associate Professor of Anthropology. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and National Endowment for the Humanities, and fellowships from the Bunting Institute, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by Leiden University in 2022 and will be the Gordon V. Childe Lecturer at University College, London in 2023. She conducted archaeological fieldwork in Honduras from 1977 to 2009, and continues research on Honduran collections in museums and archives throughout Europe and the Americas. Currently, she co-directs a multi-institution project exploring city life at Palenque, Mexico, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is the author of ten books, beginning with Cerro Palenque (1991) and most recently The Future of Nuclear Waste (2020), and editor or co-editor of another 11 volumes.
Patricia A. McAnany
Patricia A. McAnany has had a significant impact on Mesoamerican archaeology and the broader field of archaeology, including her highly important work with modern Maya peoples.
Dr. McAnany (Kenan Eminent Professor, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) trained as a Maya archaeologist. Early in her career, she became intrigued by the importance of ancestors within Maya societies and the permeability of boundaries between the past and present. After publishing Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Societies, however, she became increasingly concerned about the many forces that impinged a connection between contemporary Mayan peoples and their deep heritage. From tourism to the nationalization of sacred places as well as industrial-scale mining and farming, forces of alienation throughout the Maya region are real and unrelenting. Equally disturbing in its absence is K-12 curriculum that provides students with access to knowledge about the cultural legacies of their ancestors—their tradition of literacy, their engineering and agricultural expertise as well as innovations in statecraft. As Executive Director of InHerit: Indigenous Heritage Passed to Present (www.in-herit.org), McAnany has worked over the past two decades with local communities throughout the Maya region of southern México and northern Central America (and beyond) to provide curriculum and broader opportunities to dialogue about cultural heritage and its conservation. She is co-investigator (with Dr. Iván Batún Alpuche) of Proyecto Arqueológico Colaborativo del Oriente de Yucatán, a community-engaged archaeology project at Tahcabo in eastern Yucatán. Her collaborative team—composed of current and former graduate students, Tahcabo community members, and Dr. Batún’s students from Universidad de Oriente—is investigating the rich and varied heritage of Tahcabo, which includes a precolonial settlement, an Early Colonial mission, and contemporary settlement. She recently concluded an NGS-funded educational project focused on the ecologically fragile and culturally significant cenotes (limestone sinkholes) that dot the landscape of northern Yucatán.