Notes & News

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Maxwell Welcomes New Director

Dr. E. James Dixon has taken the helm as the new Director of the Maxwell Museum.  Dr. Dixon is an archeologist who has conducted most of his field research in Alaska.  He received his B.A. and M.A from the University of Alaska and his Ph.D. from Brown University.  He was a Marshall Fellow for research at the National Museum of Denmark in 1972 and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in 1996-97. Dr. Dixon is the author of two books published by the University of New Mexico Press.  Quest for the Origins of the First Americans was published in 1993 and Bones, Boats & Bison: Archaeology and the First Colonization of Western North America in 1999).  Bones Boats and Bison is a pioneering work that provides an overview of the early archeology of western North America.

Between 2001-07 Dr. Dixon served as Graduate Director of Museum and Field Studies and as Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado.  He was also a Fellow (senior research scientist) at the University of Colorado’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research between 2000 and 2007. Dr. Dixon received his B.A. and M.A from the University of Alaska and his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1979.  He was Curator of Archeology and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks until 1993.  He left Alaska to become curator of archeology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science where he served until 2000 when he joined the faculty at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has extensive experience in North American archeology, particularly focusing on the human colonization, high altitude and high latitude human adaptations, and early cultural development.  He has published extensively and advised and participated in educational programs for the History Channel, NOVA and other television programs.  He has been an invited lecturer in the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Russia, Norway, and Brazil.

Maxwell Museum of  Anthropology, UNM Health Sciences Library Receive $400,000 Grant From National Library of Medicine

Maxwell Museum of Anthropology and UNM’s Health Sciences Library & Informatics Center (HSLIC) have been awarded more than $400,000 from the National Library of Medicine to develop a de-identified, searchable, web-based version of a collection of orthodontic patient materials.

The physical collection is an extremely valuable set of dental casts, intraoral photographs, x-rays, and patient records from local orthodontist Dr. James Economides, according to Philip Kroth, M.D., Associate Director for Health Sciences Informatics Program Development and Assistant Professor in HSLIC, and Heather Edgar, Ph.D., Curator of Human Osteology for the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology and Research Assistant Professor of Anthropology.

“It will be an incredible resource for anthropologists studying variation in craniofacial growth, development and form, dental morphology and development, and many other fields,” adds Edgar, principal investigator for the grant.

The collection, housed in the Maxwell Museum’s climate-controlled storage facility in the Hibben Center, includes photos, X-rays, orthodontic diagnoses, dental casts, and basic patient demographic information from a diverse population. Students and others will be able to search cases electronically to view the effects of various orthodontic treatments on diverse patient populations (age, sex, race, ethnicity, etc.).