UF archaeologist named to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
A University of Florida archaeologist is among the 213 new members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced today.
Kathleen Deagan is Distinguished Research Curator of Archaeology and an adjunct professor of anthropology and history at the Florida Museum of Natural History at UF. She received her doctorate in 1974 from the University of Florida, and after teaching at Florida State University’s anthropology department for eight years, she joined the UF faculty in 1982.
Her research has focused on the archaeology of the Spanish colonial period in Florida and the Caribbean. She has conducted excavations in St. Augustine since 1972, including the identification and excavations of Fort. Mose, America’s first free black community, and Florida’s first Spanish settlement.
Since 1980, she has worked at Spanish colonial sites in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. She has directed excavations in collaboration with Jose M. Cruxent at Christopher Colombus’s first town in America, La Isabela, and has also directed archaeological programs at Concepcion de la Vega in the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Real, Haiti.
Deagan has also worked since 1984 at the site of En Bas Saline, Haiti, a large Taino town thought to have been the location of La Navidad, Columbus’s first fort, in 1492. She has been a consultant on historic preservation and archaeology in Spain, Venezuela, Panama. Peru, Jamaica, and Honduras.
Deagan is the author of eight books and more than 65 scientific papers. She was named an Alumna of Outstanding Distinction by the University of Florida in 1998, and is a recipient of the Society for Historical Archaeology’s J.C. Harrington Award for Lifetime Distinction in Historical Archaeology. She was awarded the “Order of La Florida” by the City of St. Augustine in 2007 for distinguished service to the city.
The list of the 236th class of new members is located at www.amacad.org/members.
The new class will be inducted at a ceremony on Oct. 8 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of the country’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers, convening leaders from the academic, business, and government sectors to respond to the challenges facing the nation and the world. Current academy research focuses on higher education, the humanities and the arts; science and technology policy; global security and energy; and American institutions and the public good. The academy’s work is advanced by its elected members, who are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs from around the world.