Draft:Jeffrey Quilter

Jeffrey Quilter (born June 21, 1949) is an American anthropological archaeologist who has spent his career researching in Latin America. He is currently a curator at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. He continues to publish on the archaeology of the North coast of Peru with a focus on the Moche culture and of southern Central America with a focus on Costa Rica. He also holds interests in the archaeology of Europe, notably the countries his family comes from. This includes those of the British Isles. He plans on visiting Ireland to pursue research on the life of former Peabody curator Hugh O'Neill Hencken, who played a large role in the birth of Irish archaeology. Notably, he works to make archaeology accessible to those outside of the field by aiming his writing toward laypeople.

Early life

Quilter was born on June 21, 1949 in New York City to Thomas and Dorothy Joan Quilter. His father was a waiter from South Africa, and his mother was a legal secretary from England. Jeffrey was raised in Queensbridge Houses, a public housing neighborhood in Queens.

His interest in anthropology and archaeology stems from childhood visits to England to see family with his mother, where he first encountered ancient monuments and ruins. Specifically, his interest came from seeing sites such as Stonehenge. Growing up in New York City also increased this exposure to the field, as he served as a Junior Curator at the Brooklyn Children's Museum and later acquired an internship with the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History. When he was 17, he pursued fieldwork in Peru which sparked a lifelong interest in the area.

Education

After attending Brooklyn Technical High School, Quilter began his undergraduate career at New York University in 1968. He spent one year at NYU before transferring. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago in 1972. Following his undergraduate career, Quilter attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he obtained a master's degree and PhD in anthropology in 1975 and 1981, respectively.

Career

Quilter began his career as an assistant professor at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin. He served as a professor there for 15 years, from 1980 to 1995. In addition to being a professor, from 1995 until 2005 Quilter was the Director of Pre-Columbian studies and curator of the Pre-Columbian collection at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.. He currently serves as the curator for the Department of Anthropology at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. Before being in this curatorial position, he served as the Howells Director of the Museum from 2012-2019. He wrote his book, The Moche of Ancient Peru: Media and Messages, utilizing the Moche collection of artifacts owned by the museum.

At Harvard, Quilter led a field school at the San Jose de Moro archaeological site in Peru for several years and taught classes on the Moche culture, as well as on archaeological methods and theory.

Quilter has written about the archaeology of various countries and cultures in Latin America, including those of the Andes and the Isthmo-Colombian Area. He has said that much of his work is done on topics slightly off from what is considered popular in the field. His interest in the New World was great, especially in Costa Rica and Peru, but he also found that fieldwork and research were more exciting when focusing on topics fewer people were working on.

He has written books for the public, including textbooks such as The Ancient Central Andes and another for middle and high school aged students called The Civilization of the Incas. Additionally, his book Life and Death at Paloma: Society and Mortuary Practices in a Preceramic Peruvian Village, based on excavations done with the University of Missouri, was the first study into what life would have been like in preceramic Peru.

Beyond Latin America, he also has experience researching sites of the indigenous groups of North America, focused in Wisconsin. He has long-held interests in European and Irish archaeology, as well.

Personal life

In 1977, Quilter married Sarah McAnulty, and together they have two daughters, Susanna and Elizabeth. In his free time, he enjoys playing folk music on the guitar, mandolin, and fiddle. He also participates in hobby photography. He is Episcopalian.

Awards and recognition

Quilter has received many awards and honors, including several National Science Foundation grants. Along with these, he also received grants from both the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities for his archaeological research in Costa Rica at the Rivas site, which culminated in the book, Cobble Circles and Standing Stones: Archaeology at the Rivas Site, Costa Rica. This book remains the only book in English written about a single archaeological site in Costa Rica.

Published works

• Quilter, Jeffrey. (2004) Cobble Circles and Standing Stones: Archaeology at the Rivas Site, Costa Rica. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City.
• Quilter, Jeffrey. (2005) Life and Death at Paloma: Society and Mortuary Practices in a Preceramic Peruvian Village. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City.
• Quilter, Jeffrey. (2005) Treasures of the Andes: The Glories of the Inca and Pre-Columbian South America. Sterling Publishing, New York.
• Quilter, Jeffrey. (2011) The Moche of Ancient Peru: Media and Messages. Peabody Museum Press, Cambridge.
• Quilter, Jeffrey. (2012) The Civilization of the Incas. Rosen Publishing, New York.
• Quilter, Jeffrey. (2013) The Ancient Central Andes. Routledge, Oxfordshire.

See also

• Anthropological archaeology
• Andean civilizations
• Isthmo-Colombian Area
• Latin American studies
• Rivas District