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Paul Shackel to Receive Society for Historical Archaeology’s Highest Honor

The Department of Anthropology Professor is the third from University of Maryland to receive the J.C. Harrington Medal

The Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) has named Department of Anthropology Professor Paul Shackel the 2025 recipient of the J.C. Harrington Medal, the highest honor given by the Society in recognition of a person’s lifetime of contributions to the discipline. 

To receive the J.C. Harrington Medal, individuals must be nominated, and then receive support from multiple other SHA members. 

“I am honored to know that so many professional archaeologists supported my nomination for the J.C. Harrington Award,” said Shackel. “While the medal is an award for lifetime contributions to the discipline, I still have a few more innings in the tank.”

Shackel—who, outside of academia, is a big fan of baseball—joined the University of Maryland in 1996. Prior to that, he spent seven-and-a-half years working for the National Park Service. 

“My first foray into historical archaeology began with the Archaeology in Annapolis Project with the backing of Mark Leone. From there, I continued to encounter amazing students and dedicated colleagues on subsequent archaeology projects,” he said. 

One of the “amazing students” Shackel worked with was alumna Charlotte King, who successfully lobbied Congress in December 2022 to make New Philadelphia, Illinois, "the first town legally founded, platted and registered by an African American in the United States," a national park. 

“Paul's fieldwork at the archaeological site of New Philadelphia was instrumental in the recent designation of the property as a National Historic Site,” said Barnet Pavão-Zuckerman, ANTH Professor and Chair. “Paul's scholarly work in community-engaged and social-justice archaeology sets a high bar for generations of archaeologists to come.”

Shackel has also worked with graduate and undergraduate students on a project seeking to document the lives of the people who lived, and who continue to live, in a part of Pennsylvania known for mining a kind of coal called anthracite. He has helped document the lives of the area’s coal-mining immigrants from Ireland and Eastern and Southern European countries like Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania, and Italy. More recently, he has been working to document the lives of the Spanish-speaking immigrants who arrived decades later from the Dominican Republic and Central and South America.

“My wife, Barbara Little, has always been supportive and encouraging of my work as I explored new and different projects in some challenging geographic areas in the country,” noted Shackel. 

Shackel is the third from ANTH to receive the J.C. Harrington medal. Distinguished University Professor Mark Leone was awarded the medal in 2016, and the late Paul Mullins, a 1991 master’s of applied anthropology graduate and professor at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, was posthumously awarded the 2024 medal. 

Shackel will be presented with the J.C. Harrington Medal at the 2025 SHA conference in New Orleans. 

 "We are incredibly proud of this well-deserved recognition of Paul's outstanding career, and many contributions to historical archaeology,” added Pavão-Zuckerman. “He is a real MVP in our department, campus, and discipline—a generous mentor, an outstanding campus citizen, and a treasured colleague." 

 

Published on Thu, Jan 25, 2024 - 10:12AM

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