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Lynn Meskell
Professor of Anthropology

Biography

Lynn Meskell's current research and teaching interests include a broad range of fields, such as archaeology and heritage, ethnography in South African, identity and sociopolitics, gender and feminism, and ethics. Meskell views contemporary archaeology as an anthropology of the past, a contextual and nuanced engagement with ancient culture that mirrors the ethnographic project.

Meskell, a Professor of Anthropology, came to Stanford from Columbia University. Her current fieldwork and writing examines the constructs of natural and cultural heritage and the related discourses of empowerment around the Kruger National Park, ten years after democracy in South Africa. She is interested in the specific national understanding of biodiversity and its relationship to development initiatives, democracy, historic claims and land restitution. Another project is focused on the social constitution of the figurine worlds at Çatalhöyük, Turkey.  As founding editor of the Journal of Social Archaeology, she has attempted to forge a vehicle for interdisciplinary dialogue, bringing together a wide range of scholars from diverse fields to constitute the editorial panel (feminists, historians, social theorists, and ethnographers).  Additionally, Meskell founded Stanford Heritage Ethics, an inter-disciplinary group that aims to situate their treatment of heritage firmly within the issues of ethics, politics, memory, nationalism, internationalism, materiality, conservation, development, aid, governmentality, tourism, repatriation, cultural property, intellectual property, collaborations, indigenous archaeology, restitution, codes and declarations from which they are inseparable.

Key Works

• Cosmopolitan Archaeologies. Editor.  Duke University Press, in press.
• Archaeologies of Materiality. Blackwell Publishers, 2005.
• Embedding Ethics.  Co-edited with Peter Pels. Berg Publishing, 2005.
• Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt: Material Biographies Past and Present. Berg Publishers, 2004.
• Companion to Social Archaeology.  Co-edited with Robert Preucel.  Blackwell Publishers, 2004.
• Embodied Lives: Figuring Ancient Maya and Egyptian Experience. With Rosemary Joyce.  Routledge Publishers, 2003.
• Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt. Princeton University Press, 2002.
• Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class Etcetera in Ancient Egypt.  Social Archaeology Series. Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
• Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Routledge Publishers, 1998.

Prof. Meskell in the News

• Buying, selling, owning the past
  Stanford Multidisciplinary Teaching and Research, January 2009
  
• Geopolitics of Archaeology: Preserving Natural, Ethnic and Cultural Heritage
  Worldview (WBEZ), February 5, 2008
• Oct 19 – International Women’s Day of Action
  Intercontinental Cry, September 14, 2007
• Knowledge of archaeology
  Multidisciplinary Teaching and Research at Stanford, Fall 2006
• The Scholars and the Goddess
  Atlantic Monthly, January 2001