GMU Anthropology Club GMU Home Anthropology Department at gmu
Contact Information Events Links Discussion Join

James E. Snead
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
jsnead@gmu.edu

Degrees Accomplished:
B.A., Beloit College, 1984
M.A. 1987, Ph.D. 1995, University of California, Los Angeles

James Snead grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Exposed to archaeology at an early age, he participated in fieldwork in Scotland and Chile before graduating from Beloit College with a BA in anthropology in 1984. His graduate research at UCLA emphasized Andean South America and then the U.S. Southwest. In addition to a predoctoral Brandt Dixon Fellowship at the School of American Research, Snead also served as Kalbfleisch Research Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in New York (1996-1997), and Clements Research Fellow at the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University (1998-1999). Prior to coming George Mason University in 1999 he taught at the University of Arizona (1997-1998). His book Ruins and Rivals: the Making of Southwest Archaeology was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2001. Related articles include "Lessons of the Ages: Archaeology and the Construction of Cultural Identity in the American Southwest" (Journal of the Southwest 44, spring 2002), and "Science, Commerce, and Control: Patronage and the Development of Anthropological Archaeology in the Americas," which appeared in American Anthropologist in 1999 and received the Gordon Willey Award from the Archaeology Section of the American Anthropological Association.

Over the past 10 years Snead has conducted a series of archaeological surveys in the Southwest, documenting shrines, trails, field systems, petroglyphs, and other landscape features. These results of these projects are currently being written up in a book under contract with the University of Arizona Press entitled "Knowing the Land: Archaeology, Landscape, and the Ancestral Pueblo World." A related article, "Ancestral Pueblo Trails and the Cultural Landscape of the Pajarito Plateau, New Mexico," appears in the journal Antiquity (vol. 76, Fall 2002).

In 2002 Snead began a new research initiative in the Galisteo Basin of New Mexico. This program, focusing on the intersection between migration, conflict, and landscape in the 13th century AD, is centered on Burnt Corn Pueblo, a large but poorly-understood community that was destroyed by fire at approximately AD 1300. The 2002 excavations produced large numbers of tree-ring samples and carbonized botanical remains, evidence which should provide critical information about the history of the site. Conducted in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management and local landowners, the fieldwork at Burnt Corn has established the foundation for a broader examination of a 15,000 acre area in the western Galisteo. As the first major archaeological study combining survey and excavation in the region since the 1970s, this work promises to provide a new look at changing organization of Ancestral Pueblo society during a critical period in its development.

Syllabus: