Larry J. Zimmerman

Academic Profile

Professor of Anthropology & Museum Studies
Public Scholar of Native American Representation
Department of Anthropology & Museum Studies
433 Cavanaugh
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
425 University Blvd.
Indianapolis IN 46202-5140
Telephone: 317-274-2383; Fax: 317-274-2347 E-mail: larzimme@iupui.edu

PhD, Anthropology, University of Kansas-Lawrence, 1977
M.Phil., Anthropology, University of Kansas-Lawrence, 1974
MA, University of Iowa-Iowa City, 1971
BA (Honors),  University of Iowa-Iowa City, 1969

I've had  varied and challenging experiences both in and out of academia. I began my career  at the University of South Dakota where I stayed for for 22 years, leaving in 1996 as Distinguished Regents Professor. Following South Dakota, I served from 1998-2001 as Chair of American Indian and Native Studies at the University of Iowa, then as Head of the Archaeology Department at the Minnesota Historical Society from 2002-2004. During any gaps I did cultural heritage management consulting, which I still do a bit of as time allows.

My one consistent research interest has been Native Americans, from pre-Contact times to the present. In every job I’ve had, I’ve worked closely with American Indians, and that fact brought me into realms I had never imagined I’d enter as an archaeologist. My worked forced me to recognize that Indians are from now, not just back then. What we archaeologists do isn’t just about groups that are gone, but groups that continue into the present day, and how and what we study affects their identity and their lives. This took me  into the issue of repatriation, something I initially resisted as a scientist, but the rightness of which I began to accept as a person. As I ventured further into the study of the whole relationship between scholars and Indians, I began looking at everything from how Indians are represented in museums to the possibilities of Indian people doing their own archaeology. I’ve worked in direct collaboration with the Pawnee, Lakota, Dakota, Nakota, Anishinabe, Arikara, Northern Cheyenne, Western Mohegan, and other nations. I’ve also worked a bit with Australian Aborigines who are concerned with many of the same issues as Indians.

I’m an active scholar and enjoy both research and writing, and I certainly like to engage students in the process. I’ve also edited a number of academic journals and served in a variety of positions in professional organizations, including the ethics committees of both the Society for American archaeology and the American Anthropological Association. I’m a past Secretary and the current Vice President of the World Archaeological Congress. That group has gotten me all over the world, and I’ve often figured out ways to take students along. As for teaching, that is perhaps the most fun of what I do. I handle a mixed bag of courses in Anthropology and Museum Studies, many of them linking directly to the American Indian collections of the Eiteljorg Museum. I'm also very concerned with how archaeological information is transmitted to archaeology's publics, which led to a 1991-92 stint as a National Lecturer for Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, with more than 30 lectures across the US and Canada. These concerns also led me to write Presenting the Past as part of The Archaeologist's Toolkit series I co-edited. If pressed, I'd say that my  scholarly interests are in Great Plains archaeology, computer applications in archaeology, cultural and intellectual property issues, and relationships between American Indians and archaeologists. I've just begun a research project on the archaeology of homelessness, with some fieldwork in St. Paul, MN, and now expanding into Indianapolis.

In my non-academic life, I play the didjeridoo―the Australian Aboriginal wind instrument―read horror novels, and generally get in my wife Karen’s way (she’s an IUPUI Archivist/Librarian). We also hike, cause grief for our cat, and try to keep in touch with our two grown-and-moved-away kids.

Some Recent Publications

Books and Edited volumes:

Forthcoming: Kennewick Man: Perspectives on the Ancient One. Co-edited with Claire Smith. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press (expected 2008)

Forthcoming: The Archaeologist's Field Handbook with Heather Burke and Claire Smith. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press (expected 2007).

2003 Always on the Edge (of the Prairie-Plains) Essays in Honor of David Mayer Gradwohl.  Editor. Journal of the Iowa Archaeological Society, vol. 50.
 
2003 Native North American/First Nations: Myth, Life, and Art. Trade book. London: Duncan Baird  Publishers.

2003 Ethical Issues in Archaeology. AltaMira Press: Walnut Creek, CA. Co-edited with Karen D. Vitelli  and Julie Hollowell-Zimmer.

2003 Presenting the Past. AltaMira Press: Walnut Creek, CA. 

Recent and In Press Articles:

In press, Multi-vocality, Descendant Communities, and Some Epistemological Shifts Forced by Repatriation. In, Opening Archaeology: Repatriation’s Impact on Method and Theory, edited by Thomas Killion. Santa Fe: School for American Research.

In press, Unusual or “Extreme” Beliefs about the Past, Community Identity, and Dealing with the Fringe. In,  Collaboration in Archaeological Practice: Engaging Descendent Communities, edited by Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh and T.J. Ferguson. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.

In press, Archaeological Taxonomy, Native Americans, and Scientific Landscapes of Clearance: A Case Study from Northeastern Iowa. In Landscapes of Clearance, edited by Amy Gazin-Schwartz and Angele P. Smith. Routledge. With Dawn Makes Strong Move.

2007 Simple Ideas to Teach Big Concepts: "Excavating" and Analyzing the Professor's Desk Drawer and Wastebasket. In, Teaching Archaeology for Fun, edited by Heather Burke and Claire Smith, Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

2006 Echo-Hawk, Roger and Larry J. Zimmerman. Beyond Racism: Some Opinions about Racialism and American Archaeology. American Indian Quarterly 30(3): 461-485.

2006 Liberating Archaeology, Liberation Archaeologies and WAC. Archaeologies 2(1): 85-95.

2006  Scale, Model Complexity, and Understanding: Simulation of Settlement Processes in the Glenwood Locality of Southwestern Iowa, 1976 and 2000. In, Gary Locke and Brian Molyneaux, eds., Scale in Archaeology. New York: Springer.  With Joe Alan Artz. pp. 129-144

2005 Consulting Stakeholders. In, Archaeology in Practice: A Student Guide to Archaeological Analyses, edited by Jane Balme and Alistiar Paterson.     Blackwell:London. pp. 39-58.

2005 First, be humble: working with Indigenous peoples and other descendant communities. In, Indigenous Archaeologies: Decolonizing Theory and Practice, edited by Claire Smith and H. Martin Wobst. London: Routledge. pp. 301-314.

2005 Public Heritage, a Desire for a "White" History of America, and Some Impacts of the Kennewick Man/Ancient One Decision. International Journal of Cultural Property 12(2):261-270.

2004 American Indians and Archaeology. In, Thomas Biolsi (ed.), A Companion to the Anthropology of North American Indians. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. pp. 526-541.

For a complete curriculum vitae, see http://larryjzimmerman.com/vita.html.