Campus News
Fall 2025 Emeriti Lecture: “Kicking the Prow: Reflections on a Life in Conversation with Past and Present People and Other Creatures”
Featuring UCSC Professor Emerita Diane Gifford-Gonzalez
Professor Emerita Diane Gifford-Gonzalez
The UC Santa Cruz Emeriti Association proudly presents its Fall Emeriti Lecture on October 28, 2025, featuring UCSC Professor Emerita Diane Gifford-Gonzalez. An internationally recognized authority in zooarchaeology, Gifford-Gonzalez has conducted research in the field for 55 years.
In “Kicking the Prow: Reflections on a Life in Conversation with Past and Present People and Other Creatures,” Gifford-Gonzalez will reveal how studying animal remains from archaeological sites offers profound insights into human history—and how her work has redirected major conversations in zooarchaeology.
The maritime metaphor of “kicking the prow” captures Gifford-Gonzalez’s approach to scholarship: challenging assumptions and steering archaeology in new directions. Her career has spanned continents and millennia, from investigating East African pastoralists during her first 22 years of research to spending the past 25 years examining precolonial Indigenous ecology around Monterey Bay.
“In working most of my career at disciplinary boundaries, I’ve repeatedly had the experience of ‘standing on multiple moving plates,’ in the sense of tectonic plates, where one discipline’s conceptual framework concatenated or conflicted that of another, in fields espoused by people who all seemed reasonable,” Gifford-Gonzalez says. “Perhaps because I repeatedly had to suss out playground politics during my Army Brat peregrinations, I’m cursed with trying to figure out what’s creating tensions in a situation and to name these. In my professional career, that fixation has been a starting point for inquiries that led to the writings I believe are my strongest contributions to my field.”
Gifford-Gonzalez’s influence extends beyond traditional academic publications. She has authored two books and 88 articles and chapters, and has also explored creative outlets including a mystery novel and poetry—demonstrating the diverse ways scholars can communicate about the past.
Her recent work exemplifies archaeology’s evolving relationship with Indigenous communities. In collaboration with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and researchers from UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley, she has investigated precolonial Native landscape management and diet through an ongoing eco-archaeological project examining diverse lines of evidence for Indigenous landscape and seascape stewardship practices over 7,000 years on California’s Central Coast.
Gifford-Gonzalez was honored this year with the Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award, the annual UC-wide award for humanities and social sciences scholars that recognizes the outstanding continued contributions of faculty members after their retirement.
Event Details:
October 28, 2025, 7 p.m.
In-person and virtual options available
Reception follows for in-person guests
Presented by the UC Santa Cruz Emeriti Association