Elizabeth M. Brumfiel

Professor (Ph.D. Michigan 1976)
1812 Hinman Avenue, Room 203
Lab 515 Clark, Room 126
(847) 491-4564, Lab (847) 467-6221
ebrumfiel@northwestern.edu

TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTERESTS : Mesoamerican archaeology and ethnohistory, gender archaeology, class and factional dynamics in prehistoric societies, Aztec religion.

Elizabeth M. Brumfiel is an archaeologist with broad interests in social and economic inequality, whether by class, race, gender or sexuality. Her primary focus is Aztec culture. For the past two decades she and her students have conducted archaeological excavations at Xaltocan Mexico, about twenty miles north of Mexico City. This site was the capital of a small autonomous kingdom from 900-1430 AD. It then was incorporated into the Aztec Empire, and then into the Spanish colonial empire. Brumfiel has studied how imperial domination affected local production, regional exchange, women’s roles, and religious thought at Xaltocan. Her most recent book summarizes the results of her first five years of research. Her concern with women’s production at Xaltocan has led to broader questions about the organization of social inequality and feminist and gendered archaeology. Her efforts to communicate the results of her research to the people of Xaltocan stimulated her interest in the significance of archaeology for contemporary people and ways that archaeologists collaborate successfully with members of descendant communities. Her books include Specialization, Exchange, and Complex Societies (co-edited with T.K. Earle), Factional Competition and Political Development in the New World (co-edited with J.W. Fox), Economic Anthropology of the State. She has served as President of the American Anthropological Association (2003-2005) and a Distinguished Lecturer for the scientific society Sigma Xi. She was a Course Designer of the Society of American Archaeology Task Force on the Curriculum. She was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. She is the recipient of grants/fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Heinz Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has been an invited speaker at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and the University of Cambridge. She is currently on the Editorial Board for the journals Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress, Ancient Mesoamerica, and Latin American Antiquity. She is currently co-curating an exhibit of Aztec culture, scheduled to open at the Field Museum of Chicago in November, 2008. David Horowitz lists her as one of America’s 100 Most Dangerous Professors.

RECENT COURSES TAUGHT

101 Debating the Aztecs

383 Environmental Anthropology

390 The Archaeology of Ethnicity in America

422 Archaeological Thought in Historical Perspective

490 Engendering the Past

RECENT PUBLICATIONS/PRESENTATIONS/CONFERENCES

Gender, Households, and Society: Unraveling the threads of the past and present. (co-edited with Cynthia Robin). Arlington, VA: Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association. in preparation.

Alien bodies, everyday people, and internal spaces: Embodiment, figurines and social discourse in Postclassic Mexico (with Lisa Overholtzer). In C. Halperin, K. Faust, and R. Taube, eds. in press

Mesoamerica. In The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology, C. Gosden and B.

Cunliffe, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. in press.

Gender, cloth, continuity and change: Fabricating unity in anthropology.

American Anthropologist 108:861-877. in press .

Production and Power at Postclassic Xaltocan (edited volume). Pittsburgh and Mexico City: University of Pittsburgh Department of Anthropology and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. 2005.

Methods in Feminist and Gender Archaeology: A Feeling for Difference—and Likeness. In The Handbook of Gender in Archaeology, S.M. Nelson, ed., pp.31-58. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira. 2006

Opting In and Opting Out: Tula, Cholula, and Xaltocan. In Settlement and Subsistence in Early Civilizations: Essays reflecting the contributions of Jeffrey R. Parsons, R.E. Blanton and M.H. Parsons, eds, pp. 63-88. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles.20. 2005.

Materiality, Feasts, and Figured Worlds in Aztec Mexico. In Rethinking Materiality, E. DeMarrais, C. Gosden, and C. Renfrew, eds., pp. 225-37. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. 2005.