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Dr Robert Sharer

Curator in Charge, American Section; Sally and Alvin Shoemaker Professor in Anthropologyv at the University of Pennsylvania

Specialties/Interests:

Archaeology
Maya civilization
Origins of ancient states,
Evolution of human societies

Current/Past Research:

Dr. Robert J. Sharer received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 and he has taught in the anthropology department at Penn for over 30 years. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a member of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for American Archaeology. He has conducted research in Central America for over 40 years, directing long-term multidisciplinary archaeological projects at Chalchuapa, El Salvador (1966-70), in the Salama Valley, Guatemala (1971-74), at Quirigua, Guatemala (1974-79), and at Copán, Honduras (1988-2002). He has also studied a contemporary Maya community in the northwest highlands of Guatemala, and conducted archaeological surveys and excavations of Late Preclassic settlement at El Mirador, Guatemala, and on the north coast of Honduras. In his most recent research he directed the Early Copán Acropolis Program for Penn Museum and the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, excavating the royal Acropolis of the lowland Maya site of Copan, Honduras. This project combined archaeological and historical data to reveal the origin and development of the Copán state between 400 and 650 AD.

He has published over 100 scholarly articles, and is co-author of two archaeology textbooks and several monographs reporting the results of his archaeological research, including a three volume Chalchuapa report (1978), and a one volume Verapaz report (1987). He is general editor of the Quirigua Reports, with four volumes published (1979, 1983, 1993, and 2007), and general editor of the forthcoming Early Classic Copan Acropolis Reports. He has co-edited five books, including Regional Perspectives on the Olmec (1989) and Understanding Early Classic Copán (2004), and is the author of Quirigua: A Classic Maya Center and Its Sculpture (1990), Everyday Life in Maya Civilization (1996), and two previous editions of The Ancient Maya (1983 and 1994). A completely revised and expanded edition of The Ancient Maya, published in 2005, combines a 2500-year history of Maya society with discussions of the central roles played by economic, sociopolitical, and ideological factors in the growth and development of this extraordinary civilization. By illuminating the Maya past The Ancient Maya offers a more complete context for understanding the Maya people of today and their continuing struggle to restore their cultural heritage and attain their rightful standing in the contemporary world.