James Fanto Deetz was born in Cumberland, Maryland on February 8th, 1930. He was the only son of John Harold Deetz and Catherine Fanto Deetz.
In 1948 James Deetz graduated from Fort Hill High School, in Cumberland Maryland. From there he left to Cambridge, Massachusetts to attend at Harvard University from 1948 to 1950. In early 1951 (while still being taught at Harvard) he enlisted in the United States Air Force. Almost three years later he married Eleanore Joanne Kelley in Pierre, South Dakota on November 17th. Not long after in 1954 they had their first child. James was honorably discharged from the Armed forces in 1955.
Continuing on in his academic career he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1955 and a Teaching Fellow in Archaeology starting in 1957 and going to 1960, both from Harvard University. In 1958 he was an archaeologist for the Smithsonian Institution on a River Basin Survey. Then in 1958-59 he had a Harvard Graduate Fellowship and in 1959 a Master of Arts in Anthropology. With that he began his work at Plymouth Plantation in Virginia. And finally he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1960.
In 1961, James Deetz became the Archaeological Adviser at Plymouth Plantation (a place he worked at and wrote about his entire life) in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and also became Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Then in 1965-66 he went back to Harvard as the Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology, was also welcomed as a Research Fellow in North American Anthropology from Harvard, and joined the Advisory Panel of the National Science Foundation from 1965-67. Also in 1965 James became an Associate Professor (in Anthropology) at UCSB. And the following year (1966) at Santa Barbara he became the Professor of Anthropology. In 1967 he left UCSB to take the position of Professor of Anthropology at Brown University. By 1968 he left Brown so that he could focus on his work at Plymouth Plantation as the Assistant Director from 1967-78.
In 1971-72 Deetz received a Fellowship at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. For 1972-74 he was on the Executive Committee of the Society for American Archaeology and in 1974 became President of the Society for Historical Archaeology (at the end of his term in 1975 he moved to the Executive Committee of the Society for Historical Archaeology, 1975-76).
In 1978-94 he was a Professor of Anthropology at the University California Berkeley (UCB), and from 1979 through 1987 was the Director of the Lowie Museum of Anthropology, UCB. Then, in 1982, James Deetz became involved with a new colonial site: Flowerdew Hundred. He joined as a member and became part of the Board of Directors, until his death in 2000.
In teaching abroad James Deetz was a Visiting Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa in the fall of 1984. He went back to South Africa 1988-91 as an Honorary Visiting Professor to the University of Cape Town and also for the Eastern Cape Historical Archaeology Project as Director of their Human Sciences Research Council. Also in South Africa in 1988 and 1990 he was made an Overseas Research Fellow by the Human Sciences Research Council, and in the United States was the Director for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) of the Summer Institute in the Archaeology of European Expansion 1550-1700 for Flowerdew Hundred, Virginia, from 1988-89. And in 1990-93 was made an Honorary Research Associate by the Albany Museum in Grahamstown, South Africa. In 1991 he was Director of the NEH Summer Institute on the Emergence of Modern America at Flowerdew Hundred, Virginia. For 1993-94 he was a Visiting Professor of New World Studies at the University of Virginia, and from 1994 till his death in 2000 was Harrison Professor of Historical Archaeology at the University of Virginia.
James Deetz's field of research focused on historical archaeology (a field focused on literate cultures and literacy's impact on cultural changes) and the study of their material remains (a method known as structural anthropology which originated with Claude Lévi-Strauss) to discover what they were truly like in the past. He believed that, while written texts may hold a skewed perspective, the materials a culture used from day to day in normal life could not lie and would give an objective perspective. Deetz's methods and work circled around the importance of material culture he defined as “that sector of our physical environment that we modify through culturally determined behavior."
The questions that fueled his research are: How are cultural changes expressed in the archaeological record? And: What can be derived from the archaeological record that was left out of the written record? Other wise stated by James Deetz, "How relationships perceived in the designs and forms of different sets of artifacts relate to organizing principals which tie a whole society together, and how over time these shift." He stressed the idea that artifacts are of key insight into peoples of the past.
James Deetz helped the push to understanding historical archaeology as a way of understanding people not only through their written works but through the actual evidence they left behind (including structural anthropology as part of historical archaeology). He felt that that was the best way to understand people of the past the way they really were. He stressed the idea that artifacts are the remains and a key insight into cultures of the past.
One specific method Deetz would use was explained in The Dynamics of Stylistic Change in Arikara Ceramics. The Arikara (Arickaree) culture is a native North American culture which long ago resided primarily in North Dakota along the Missouri River near the mouth of the Platte River. Deetz would attempt to determine whether a change in social organization at a given time period was related to changes in their ceramic designs of the time. He established that there were three possibilities: either there is no relation between the change in ceramics and social organization; the two changed because of a third event; or they are a direct result of one another.
Deetz encouraged researchers, his students, and the public alike to place less importance on the writing of a time, and more on the artifacts they left behind to understand a culture. He would put this concept simply saying, “don't read what we have written; look at what we have done.”
James Deetz had 10 children (6 boys, 4 girls), and was married twice: first to Eleanore Joanne Kelley (1953-1997), and then to Patricia Elena Scott (1997-2000). He died on November 25th, 2000, at age 70.
Written Works:
Deetz earlier works were very specific, but over time began to encompass broader areas and were written more to give the public a better understanding of anthropology as well.
A Brief History of the Discovery of Neanderthal Man (1958)
Archaeological Investigations at La Purisima Mission (1963)
The Dynamics of Stylistic Change in Arikara Ceramics (1965)
In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life (1977)
History and Archaeological Theory (1988)
American Historical Archaeology: Methods and Results (1988)
The Transformation of British Culture in the Eastern Cape, 1820-1860(with Margot Winer) (1990)
Flowerdew Hundred: The Archaeology of a Virginia Plantation, 1619-1864 (1993)
In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (expanded and revised edition) (1996)
The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony (with Patricia Scott Deetz) (2000)
References:
The Plymouth Colony Archive Project James Fanto Deetz: 1930-2000
2) Curriculum Vitae & Personal History
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/users/deetz/Plymouth/JDeetzmem5.html
3) James Deetz A Biographical Sketch
http://www.utexas.edu/courses/wilson/ant304/biography/arybios98/birtbio.html
4) Obituary from University of California, Berkeley By Patricia McBroom, Media Relations
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2000/11/28_deetz.html
6) In Memoriam: James F. Deetz, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology
http://anthropology.berkeley.edu/bam!.dec.00.pdf
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