Final Report: An Archaeologist Excavates His Past - Hardcover

Coe, Michael D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0500051437 ISBN 13: 9780500051436

Publisher: Thames & Hudson, 2006

Synopsis

"A moving autobiography, an exciting account of the rediscovery of vanished civilizations, and unforgettable portraits of the argumentative archaeologists who made those rediscoveries. Enjoy!"Jared Diamond

For more than four decades, Michael Coe has been at the forefront of American archaeology. His research on the Olmecs and the Maya has had a decisive effect on the way we think about Mesoamerican culture, and his acclaimed books have introduced archaeology to a popular audience. Now, in an act of personal excavation, Michael Coe looks back on a remarkably diverse life.

For one whose life's work meant overturning many previously held assumptions about the past, Coe's early years were quite traditionally American. The Coes were a well-to-do Long Island family, and Michael was born to a privileged lifestyle. He was an indifferent student in college, and it took some time before he settled on archaeologytime that was occupied by a stint in the CIA, stationed on the China coast and in Taiwan, and travels to Thailand and Sri Lanka.

Beginning in 1955, when Coe entered the Graduate School of Harvard University, he committed himself to the civilizations of ancient America. He worked on the front line of a generation of archaeological discovery, research, and interpretation that has profoundly altered and enhanced our vision of ancient Mesoamerica. His quest to penetrate archaeological puzzles and mysteries has led him on some extraordinary adventures: digging in remote Guatemala in grueling conditions; investigating, dating, and defining the little-known Olmec culture.

Coe has always had plenty of enthusiasm to sparefor his wife, Sophie, and five children, and the dilapidated Massachusetts farmhouse that they restored; for art collecting; for fly fishing (an obsession that has taken him from the tropics to Siberia); and for travelto Russia under Brezhnev, to Angkor Wat after the Khmer Rouge. Now, with the publication of his memoirs, the general public will recognize what his colleagues have always known: here is a man of brilliance, humor, and charm, who has lived his life as an ebullient adventure. 41 illustrations.

About this title

About the Author

Michael D. Coe (1929– 2019) was Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Yale University and Curator Emeritus for the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University. His books include The Maya, Mexico, and Breaking the Maya Code.

Reviews

In this charming memoir, archaeologist Coe (Breaking the Maya Code) does for archaeology what E. O. Wilson's Naturalist did for evolutionary biology, looking back on a fruitful career, acknowledging his own good fortune and giving us a deeply humanist look at one man's life in science. His Long Island childhood and young adult years are related with both dry amusement and youthful wonder, as is his first trip to Yucatan as an unfocussed Harvard undergraduate, when he became fascinated with the mysteries of the Maya and decided to pursue anthropology. His stint as a CIA operative in the Far East during the Korean War takes him further into the world of archaeology, introducing him to Chinese history and important Taipei scholars. He covers his subsequent travels to such exotic locales as Thailand, Sri Lanka, Guatemala and Tennessee. Coe also writes lovingly of his wife, the late Sofie Dobzhansky, daughter of the brilliant geneticist, Theodosius Dobzhansky, and how her fluency in Russian would become crucial to his work. Coe's vivid description, keen insights and clear prose will keep readers engaged and wanting more; fortunately, a bibliography of his principal publications is included. 41 b&w illustrations.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0500051437
• ISBN 13: 9780500051436
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224