Twenty-five years after receiving his Master's from the UI Department of Anthropology, Larry Zimmerman has returned to Iowa City to assume the positions of Associate Research Archaeologist in the Office of the State Archaeologist and Adjunct Professor of the UI Anthropology Department. Zimmerman attended the University of Iowa as an undergraduate -- graduating as an honors anthropology student in 1969. He continued on and completed the Master's program in 1971 before enrolling in a doctoral program at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, where he received his degree in 1976. Zimmerman was hired by the University of South Dakota (USD) in 1974 to develop the anthropology program that he built to five professors, a contract archaeology lab, and an anthropology major (1979). During his 22-year tenure at the USD, Zimmerman spent the 1992-1993 academic year on sabbatical teaching North American archaeology in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Southampton in England.
Though Zimmerman specializes in North American archaeology (Great Plains and a little Midwestern), he notes, "I'm a generalist, really" -- which he credits learning in the UI Anthropology Department. At USD, Zimmerman taught a variety of courses on cultural anthropology, religion, film, and North America, while the Department typically hired contract archaeologists to teach the archaeology courses.
Zimmerman's primary research interests in the last decade have focused on indigenous interactions with archaeologists and all other anthropologists, as related to the reburial issues and the use of technology. Zimmerman is a supporter of trying to get archaeologists and Native Americans to work together by engaging in ethnocritical archaeology, which differs from ethnoarchaeology where the research agenda is typically set by non-indigenous archaeologists. Ethnocritical archaeology is instead informed by putting the archaeological tools into the hands of indigenous peoples and letting them set the research agenda. Zimmerman is also interested in how people use technology to establish and maintain cultural identity.
About two years ago Zimmerman developed an interest in working with the World Wide Web while searching for information about the Dead Sea Scrolls on the Web. Since then, he has created a widely-recognized, award-winning web site which appeared on the Discovery Channel's The Secrets of the Internet in late Nov. 1996. The site Fantastic Archaeology (under: http://www.usd.edu/anth) was also named in Point Com's Top 5% Web Sites. Zimmerman believes the Web will become increasingly important for research and teaching. He tries to encourage its use in his classes.
Zimmerman's published work reflects his wide range of interests. Since beginning his academic career, Zimmerman has published 11 books, monographs or edited works, and more than 150 articles, book reviews and technical reports. Recently, he has co-edited four works: Human Remains: Contemporary Issues with Glen Davidson in a Special Issue of Death Studies 14 (6) in 1990; Idea to Institution: Higher Education in South Dakota with H. Hoover, R. Alexander and P. Peterson in 1989; and South Dakota Leaders with H.T. Hoover in 1989; Indians and Anthropologists: Vine Deloria, Jr. and the Critique of Anthropology (U of Arizona Press) with Tom Biolsi in 1997. In 1996, Zimmerman published Native North America (Little Brown, US).
The major project on his horizon for 1997 is to co-organize a conference on Indigenous People in an Interconnected World with two other archaeologists: Claire Smith, University of New England (Armidale, Australia) and Graeme Ward, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (Canberra). The upcoming conference will be funded by an Australian-American Foundation Fulbright Symposium Grant.
The move to Iowa City made sense for Zimmerman's whole family. His wife, Karen, who is a librarian, secured a job directing the TWIST Project at the UI Library in March 1996. Their children, Deitrich (23) and Ali (20) already attended school here, so now they do not have to travel quite so far to see their parents. Both Deitrich, a sixth-year senior, and Ali, a junior, "swore" they'd never even take anthropology courses and both, ironically, have ended up as anthropology majors. In South Dakota, Zimmerman and his family lived on 20 acres. Now he misses living in the country but admits that he doesn't miss having to cut wood for the fire or the five hours it took to mow the yard. Now that Zimmerman doesn't have to do these chores, he may find more time to engage in the non-academic activities that he does enjoy, such as playing racquetball, reading horror novels, and playing the didjeridoo to which he was introduced 5 years ago by an Australian didjeridoo player attending a conference in South Dakota.