The Department of Anthropology began at the University of New Mexico in 1928, with summer archaeological field schools at Jemez Pueblo and Chaco Canyon and fall semester courses. The first three BA's and two MA's were conferred in 1931-32, the first PhD in 1948. During the 2002-03 academic year, 80 BA degrees and BS degrees, 29 MA and MS degrees, and 12 doctorates were awarded. Every summer, the department sponsors various field schools in New Mexico and Kampsville, Illinois. Click here for pictures of the department then and now.

The first academic anthropology programs in the United States were offered at the University of Pennsylvania (1886), Harvard (1887), Clark University (1889), which conferred the first doctorate in 1892, and the University of Chicago (1892). In the West and Southwest, programs at the University of Arizona (1915), and the University of Utah (1926) preceded UNM's, which initially concentrated on Southwest archaeology and ethnology.

The University of New Mexico was founded in 1889, thirteen years before the territory became the 47th state in 1912. Its seventh president, James F. Zimmerman, for whom the library is named, set up the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences in 1928. The first faculty member and Head was Southwest archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett, first director of the School of American Research (1907), the Museum of New Mexico (1909), and the San Diego Museum of Man (1916), who had taught the territory's first anthropology courses in 1900 while president of New Mexico Normal School (now Highlands University) in Las Vegas. Hewett and Zimmerman launched successful efforts to acquire important archaeological sites for UNM, including the Salinas missions, Coronado Monument, and Chaco Canyon.

Annual summer field schools begun by Hewett in 1928 have continued since at various Southwest sites. In summer 1996 the Department assumed sponsorship of the longstanding bio-archaeological field school of the Center for American Archaeology at Kampsville, Illinois, led by Center President Leslie Spier and UNM Distinguished Professor Jane Buikstra. with UNM's Southwest Hispanic Research the department supports a field station at the Harwood Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. There is also a field station in Mbaracayú Reserve, Paraguay.

The Department's Museum of Anthropology became Albuquerque's first public museum in 1932. When the Administration-Laboratory Building (now Scholes Hall) opened in 1936, the department occupied the east wing, the museum the first floor center. By 1945, when Leslie Spier founded the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology (renamed the Journal of Anthropological Research in 1973), there were six faculty members. The first doctorate was awarded in 1948 to John Adair for his study of returning war veterans at Zuni Pueblo.

The Department entered a period of expansion and diversification after 1961, when it moved to its present quarters in the old student union building. By 1972 the faculty had grown from six to twenty-three and courses were diversified, including a long-term commitment to Latin American Studies. Four sub fields (Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, Ethnology, Linguistic Anthropology) were formed in 1975, with Human Evolutionary Ecology added in 1992 and Ethnology/Linguistic Anthropology merged in 1996. During the 1980's graduate study became more theoretical in focus, while the undergraduate program was reorganized around a core curriculum.

The First museum professional had been hired in 1962, when a museum annex was opened. Additional museum space and a patio wing of faculty offices were finished in 1972 and the museum renamed Maxwell Museum of Anthropology in honor of philanthropists Dorothy and Gilbert Maxwell; it was accredited by the American Association of Museums the following year. The Anthropology Annex was remodeled in 1982 for faculty and the Office of Contract Archaeology, founded in 1974 as a semi-autonomous unit of the Department and now a research division of the museum. In 2002 the Hibben Center, with collections, curation and classroom space, opened thanks to a major donation from archaeologist and long-time UNM faculty member Frank C. Hibben.

In December 1999 the Department and the Museum received a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to establish and endow the Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies, named in honor of Professor Ortiz, a faculty member from 1974 until his death in 1997. Sponsored programs bring together community scholars and cultural specialists with their academic counterparts for mutual teaching, learning, interaction and performance.

During its long history the Department has awarded 234 doctorates in addition to MA, MS, BA and BS degrees. Numbered among its past faculty are eight members of the National Academy of Sciences (Lewis Binford, Jane Buikstra, Eugene Hammel, Henry Harpending, Clyde Kluckhohn, Jeremy Saboff, Leslie Spier, Erik Trinkaus), two Mac Arthur Foundation fellows (Steven Feld, Alfonso Ortiz), five Distinguished Professors (Binford, Feld, Louise Lamphere, James Spuhler, Lawrence Straus), one Presidential Professor (Phillip Bock), four University Regents professors (Keith Basso, Lamphere, Trinkaus, Marta Weigle), five UNM Annual Research lecturers (Binford, Buikstra, Lamphere, Stanley Newman, Spier), two University Regents Lecturers, (Carole Nagengast, W.H. Wills), and former presidents of the American Anthropological Association (Buikstra, Kluckhohn, Lamphere, Spier), the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (Buikstra, Spuhler), the American Ethnological Society for American Archaeology (Saboff). The Department's 31 tenure-track faculty members teach some 185 graduate students and 150 undergraduate majors among the hundreds of students drawn to anthropology classes. The last decade has brought increased attention to biological and forensic anthropology, cultural resource management, collaborative research, policy, and public anthropology in a department that maintains a strong commitment to both undergraduate and graduate education.

Want to read more about the history of the department? Click here to view a JAR article in PDF Format.