SEAC Lifetime Achievement Awards
William Harrison Marquardt: Bill received his PhD in 1974 from Washington University in St. Louis. He has spent much of his career in Southeastern archaeology with forays into the US Southwest and in France. He is currently the John S. and James L. Knight Curator of South Florida Archaeology and Ethnography at the Florida Museum of Natural History, as well as Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Paleoenvironmental Studies at the University of Florida, and founder and Director of the Randell Research Center.
Bill has worked in Southeastern archaeology since his undergraduate years and has made lengthy and continuous contributions to Southeastern archaeology and SEAC since the late 1960s. His lengthy list of publications includes book chapters, peer-reviewed articles, CRM reports, major monographs, and co-authored volumes, many of which illuminate the archaeology of Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and South Carolina.
Bill’s interdisciplinary research was especially praised by colleagues who wrote in support of his award nomination. He is truly an interdisciplinary scholar who regularly works with botanists, faunal analysts, geologists, and geophysicists to expand our understanding of prehistory, coastal environments, climate change, and interactions of humans with their environments.
He also excels at public education and outreach. As a museum anthropologist, Bill’s efforts to properly curate collections of major research value have made them accessible to a wide range of professionals, while his efforts to preserve and interpret sites have made them accessible to the general public. This aspect of Bill’s career has been recognized throughout Florida with the bestowal of numerous awards.
Bill has devoted countless hours to research and public outreach efforts at the Pineland site on Pine Island, Florida, where he helped secure the property for protection by the State of Florida. Today the interpretive Calusa Trail and the Randell Research Center educational complex introduce almost 9,000 visitors annually to the site, with its remarkable Calusa mounds and canals, and provide a focus for scholarly research and archaeological preservation in southwestern Florida.
Bill has been devoted to SEAC throughout his lifelong career in archaeology. He was the first editor of our organization’s professional journal, Southeastern Archaeology. He has encouraged young scholars to present their work at SEAC and has organized numerous symposia over the years. And he has served on the Native American Liaison Committee and was Chair of the Lifetime Achievement Award Committee.
In summary, Bill’s interdisciplinary and collaborative research, thoughtful theoretical interpretations of past human societies of the Southeast, his leadership roles in public education and outreach, and his work as an institution-builder make William H. Marquardt a very deserving recipient for SEAC’s Lifetime Achievement Award.