Michael Dietler

(PhD, UC Berkeley 1990) Associate Professor of Anthropology, in the Program on the Ancient Mediterranean World, Associate in Classics, and of Social Sciences in the College, conducts archaeological research on the "Celtic" societies of Iron Age Europe and particularly on the colonial encounter with Etruscans, Greeks and Romans in southern France. He is also engaged in research exploring the politics of archaeological practice and the use of the ancient past in the construction of Celtic identity and social memory in modern ethno-nationalist and postmodern transnational contexts. A third project is ethnoarchaeological research in Kenya directed toward the socio-historical understanding of material culture, spatio-temporal concepts and economics.
email: m-dietler@uchicago.edu

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Selected Publications:

1990 Driven by drink: the role of drinking in the political economy and the case of Early Iron Age France. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 9: 352-406.

1993 Living on Luo time: reckoning sequence, duration, history, and biography in a rural African Society (with I. Herbich). World Archaeology, 25: 248-260.

1994 "Our ancestors the Gauls": archaeology, ethnic nationalism, and the manipulation of Celtic identity in modern Europe. American Anthropologist 96: 584-605.

1997 The Iron Age in Mediterranean France: colonial encounters, entanglements, and transformations. Journal of World Prehistory. 11: 269-358

1998 Habitus, techniques, style: An integrated approach to the social understanding of material culture and boundaries (with I. Herbich). In M. Stark, ed., The Archaeology of Social Boundaries. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Press, pp. 232-263

1998 Consumption, agency, and cultural entanglement: theoretical implications of a Mediterranean colonial encounter. In J. Cusick, ed., Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change and Archaeology. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 288-315.

1998 A tale of three sites: the monumentalization of Celtic oppida and the politics of collective memory and identity. World Archaeology, 30: 72-89

1999 Rituals of commensality and the politics of state formation in the "princely" societies of Early Iron Age Europe. In P. Ruby, eds., Les princes de la Protohistoire et l'émergence de l'état, pp. 135-152. Naples: Collection de l'École Française de Rome 252

2001 Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power (ed. w/ B. Hayden). Washington, DC: Smithsonian.

2001 American archaeology at the Millennium: a user’s guide. Revista d'Arqueologia de Ponent, 11:7-20.

2002 L'Archéologie du colonialisme: consommation, emmêlement culturel, et rencontres coloniales en Méditerranée. In Regards croisés sur le métissage, L. Turgeon (ed.), pp. 135-184 Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval.

2003 The warrior of Lattes: An Iron Age statue discovered in Mediterranean France (with M. Py). Antiquity. 77: 870-795.

2004 La société lattoise à l'aube de la conquête romaine: Réflexions sur le colonialisme et la vie quotidienne dans une ville portuaire indigène. In Lattara 17. Le quartier 30-35 de la ville de Lattara (fin IIIe - Ier siècles av. n. è.): Regards sur la vie urbaine à la fin de la Protohistoire, edited by Michel Py, pp. 403-412. Lattes: ARALO.

2005 The archaeology of colonization and the colonization of archaeology: theoretical challenges from an ancient Mediterranean colonial encounter. In G. Stein, ed., The Archaeology of Colonial Encounters: Comparative Perspectives. Santa Fe: SAR Press pp. 33-68.

2005 Consumption, and Colonial Interaction in the Rhône Basin of France: A Study of Early Iron Age Political Economy. Lattes, France: Monographies d'Archéologie Meditéranéenne.

2006  Culinary Encounters: Food, Identity, and Colonialism. In K. Twiss, ed., We Are What We Eat: Archaeology, Food, and Identity. University of Southern Illinois Press, 218-242

2006  Alcohol: Anthropological/Archaeological Perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology, 35: 229-249

2007 The Iron Age in the Western Mediterranean. In R. Saller, et al., eds., The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World. Cambridge Univ. Press, 242-276.

2007  (w/ I. Herbich)  'The Long Arm of the Mother-in-Law': Post-Marital Resocialization, Cultural Transmission, and Material Style. In Bowser, Horne and Stark, eds., Breaking Down Boundaries: Anthropological Approaches to Cultural Transmission and Material Culture. U. Arizona Press (in press).