James Deetz

James Deetz (born February 8, 1930 , † November 25, 2000 ) was an important representative of historical archeology in the USA .

Deetz received his PhD from Harvard University in 1960 . He was then Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara , Brown University and the University of Virginia . His main areas of work were Virginia and New England, but he also carried out projects in South Africa. He has been particularly committed to the Plymouth Plantation in Plymouth , Massachusetts since 1961 .

He was interested in cultural change, where he on the concept of culture of Walter Taylor fell back, saw culture as a not directly observable theoretical construct that is however his statements as ritual, social structure or material culture through tangible. For Deetz it was a central question of how cultural change is reflected in archaeological sources, which aspects of history are accessible to archaeological sources and which aspects were not reflected in the written tradition.

Publications (selection)

• Deetz 2000: The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony (with Patricia Scott Deetz). New York: WH Freeman.
• Deetz 1996: In Small Things Forgotten: An Archeology of Early American Life. (expanded and revised edition). New York: Anchor, Doubleday.
• Deetz 1993: Flowerdew Hundred: The Archeology of a Virginia Plantation, 1619-1864. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
• Deetz 1990: The Transformation of British Culture in the Eastern Cape, 1820-1860 (with Margot Winer). Social Dynamics vol. 16 no.1 pp. 55-75.
• Deetz 1988: American Historical Archeology: Methods and Results. Science vol. 239, January 22: 362-7.
• Deetz 1988: History and Archaeological Theory: Walter Taylor Revisited. American Antiquity 53 (1): 13-22.
• Deetz 1977: In Small Things Forgotten: The Archeology of Early American Life. New York: Doubleday.

obituary

• Antiquity June 2001 (M. Beaudry)

Web site

• The Plymouth Colony Archive Project