The fall 2008 issue of UNM’s internationally-known “Journal of Anthropological Research” is dedicated to the memory of the late Robert Santley, a professor of Anthropology from 1978 – 2006. Colleagues say Santley was controversial, flamboyant and brilliant, an irascible iconoclast, as well as hard working and productive as a Mesoamerican prehistoric archeologist.
Santley was famed for his work in the Basin of Mexico (Teotihuacan) with his mentor Penn State professor William Sanders, and University of Michigan professor Jeffery Parsons, as well as for his own work on Matacupan and its hinterland in the Tuxla Mountains of southern Veracruz State. Santley was a master of large-scale archeological survey and high-powered lithic analysis, notably the study of the economics of the obsidian trade in ancient Mesoamerica.
This issue includes papers from Santley’s students and mentors, and a section “Debating with Robert: Papers on Mesoamerican Archeology in Memory of Robert S. Santley” is edited by his former colleages Christopher Pool, associate professor and chair of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky and Patricia McAnany, Kenan professor of Anthropology and chair at the University of North Carolina.
The” Journal of Anthropological Research” has been published quarterly by the University of New Mexico since 1945. The current editor is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Lawrence G. Straus.