Name Gerald Schroedl | Role Author | |
Books Excavations of the Leuty and McDonald Site Mounds Education Washington State University, University of Washington | ||
Gerald F. Schroedl is a professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee. He specializes in Southeastern United States and Caribbean prehistoric and historic archaeological sites. He is an authority on Cherokee Prehistory and the archaeology of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.
Schroedl was born in Portland, Oregon on July 20, 1945. He grew up in Vancouver, Washington where he attended primary and secondary school. He started off his college career in Vancouver, Clark Junior College before transferring to the University of Washington, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1967. He then went to Washington State University in Pullman to complete his Ph.D. in anthropology in 1972.
As a youth, he was fascinated by natural history and science, and was always interested in American Indian cultures. In high school, he began reading anthropology and popular books on archaeology, and was initially interested in cultural anthropology. After attending an archaeological field school his senior year in college he decided to focus on archaeology in graduate school.
Schroedl has conducted excavations in Washington, South Carolina, Tennessee, and St. Kitts. His research interests include North American archaeology, Southeastern United States prehistory, ethnohistory and ethnography, archaeological method and theory, archaeological resource management, remote sensing, and archaeology of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean. He has written 10 books and monographs, 23 articles in books, and 39 technical journal articles.
He came to the University of Tennessee in 1971 to work on the Tellico Archaeological Project and other CRM projects. In 1978, he joined the department in a tenure track position and has been here since.
Key excavations
Since the 1960s, Schroedl has been involved in over 60 different archaeological projects. His work in Tennessee has emphasized late prehistoric sites and the villages of the 18th century Cherokee. In the 1980s and 1990s his interests in Cherokee culture continued with excavations at Chattooga. He received the United States Forest Service National Award for Excellence for contributions on this project.
In 1996, his research took a new direction when he began research at the Brimstone Hill Fortress, a UNESCO World Heritage site, on St. Kitts in the Eastern Caribbean. This project emphasizes studies of enslaved Africans and British colonial culture.