Campus News
Anthropology professor emerita recognized for extraordinary continuing contributions to the university
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, one the foremost authorities in zooarchaeology, recently received the Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award.
Distinguished Research Professor Emerita of Anthropology Diane Gifford-Gonzalez recently received the Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award. The annual UC-wide award for humanities and social sciences scholars recognizes the outstanding continued contributions of faculty members after their retirement.
Gifford-Gonzalez was honored this year, alongside Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus Howard Giles, of UC Santa Barbara. Both have especially long and notable records of research, teaching, and service to the University of California, their disciplines, and their communities.
Gifford-Gonzalez retired from teaching at UC Santa Cruz in 2015, but has continued to support the campus through supervision of undergraduate research and doctoral students and service on UC Santa Cruz senate committees and through the Emeriti Association. She is internationally recognized as one the foremost authorities in zooarchaeology and continues to provide intellectual leadership in her discipline.
Her expertise intersects archaeology, zooarchaeology, gender, the history of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa, and the Indigenous communities in California’s Monterey Bay area. Her research has led to real-world impacts, including the successful disposition of ancestral remains for the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band of Coastanoan/Ohlone Indians, and an ongoing eco-archaeological project to examine diverse lines of evidence for Indigenous landscape and seascape stewardship practices over 7,000 years on California’s Central Coast.
Having been an early leader in zooarchaeology, the study of human-animal interactions, in 2018 she published what has since become the leading textbook in the field, An Introduction to Zooarchaeology. Her scholarship continues, with publications in leading peer-reviewed journals. Since her retirement, she has also served as the keynote speaker at three major international conferences and has given distinguished lectures, including at the Institute for Human History at the Max Planck Institute.
The Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award now adds to a long list of awards and honors that Professor Emerita Gifford-Gonzalez has received since her retirement, including election to the National Academy of Sciences, appointment as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Anthropology Section, a fellowship with the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, and the Distinguished Social Sciences Emeriti Faculty Award from UC Santa Cruz.
This story was adapted from a press release by UCLA.