Anthropology

Professor Meyers is an archaeologist with more than 25 years of field experience. His interests include plantation settlements and other cultural landscapes since colonial times. He currently oversees an investigation of heritage sites on Cat Island in the central Bahamas. Students participate in the project through the College’s Winter Term and summer research programs. He has accompanied students to professional conferences, and an article that he coauthored with anthropology major Megan Adams ’20 recently appeared in Expedition magazine. As a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in 2021, Professor Meyers undertook a semester of teaching and research collaboration at University of The Bahamas.

Prior to his current project, Professor Meyers spent more than a dozen years directing archaeological work at Hacienda Tabi, a renowned plantation on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. His research focused on understanding the lives of Maya-descent laborers who lived on the estate. His account of the endeavor, Outside the Hacienda Walls, garnered the 2015 Felicia Holton Book Award from the Archaeological Institute of America.

Professor Meyers is a former Chair of the Comparative Cultures Collegium, a multidisciplinary department that oversees programs in the modern languages, Anthropology, Latin American Studies, International Business, and International Studies.

Recent Publications

• 2022 Engraved Ship Iconography in The Bahamas. Approaches and Insights from Cat Island. Journal of Maritime Archaeology 17:43-69.
• 2019 Humanitarian Reform, Model Cottages, and the Habitational Landscape of Slavery on a Bahama Island. In Archaeology of Domestic Landscapes of the Enslaved in the Caribbean, edited by James A. Delle and Elizabeth C. Clay, pp. 141-165. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
• 2017 Enigma of the Shallow Seas. Current World Archaeology (86):30-35.
• 2017 Prerevolutionary Henequen Landscapes of Northwestern Yucatán. In The Value of Things: Prehistoric to Contemporary Commodities in the Maya Region, edited by Jennifer Mathews and Thomas Guderjan, pp. 124-143. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
• 2015 Striking for Freedom: The 1831 Uprising at Golden Grove Plantation, Cat Island. International Journal of Bahamian Studies 21(1):74-90.
• 2008 Houselot Refuse Disposal and Geochemistry at a Late 19th Century Hacienda Village in Yucatan, Mexico. Journal of Field Archaeology 33(4):371-388 [Allison Harvey ’09 and Sarah Levithol ‘08, coauthors].
• 2005 Material Expressions of Social Inequality at a Porfirian Sugar Hacienda in Yucatán, Mexico. Historical Archaeology 39(4):112-137.
• 2002 Peonage, Power Relations, and the Built Environment at Hacienda Tabi, Yucatan, Mexico. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6(4):225-252 [David L. Carlson, coauthor]