Robert McC. Adams

Robert McC. Adams received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he later also served on the faculty and in the administration.

Adams's wide-ranging interests include the historical geography, ecology, and archaeology of early states; encounters of European powers and peoples with their worldwide counterparts during five centuries of hegemonic expansion; the history of technology; and contemporary science and research policies.

He has published principally on several decades of fieldwork devoted to long-term changes in settlement and land-use patterns of Middle Eastern urban societies, especially in Iraq. More recent research on socioeconomic contexts of technological innovation is reported in Paths of Fire: An Anthropologist's Inquiry into Western Technology (Princeton University Press, 1996).

Adams was Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (1984-1994) prior to coming to UCSD upon retirement. He also maintains an interest in public museums as settings for cultural representation and interaction.

He was a Distinguished Lecturer of the American Anthropological Association in 1976 and recipient of a Distinguished Service Award from the Society for American Archaeology in 1996.

Adams currently is principal planner for a comparative study of research training and activities in German and American universities under the auspices of the German-American Academic Council Foundation.