Robert Sharer

Robert J. Sharer ( born March 16, 1940 in Battle Creek (Michigan), † September 20, 2012 ) was an American Altamerikanist and Mayan researcher.

Life

His parents were Robert E. Sharer and Jessie Tyler. He grew up in East Lansing, where his father ran an Evening College at Michigan State University.

In a summer job at the Museum of Michigan State University his boss, the Arctic expert Sanford Moreau Maxwell sparked his interest in anthropology. During his senior year, 1960/61, at Michigan State University Sharer was unexpectedly nominated for a Woodrow Wilson Graduate Fellowship. The dinner invited Loren Eiseley invited him to the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied archeology at Bernard Wailes. An excavation project with Wailes in Cornwell convinced him that his interest lay in archeology. Interrupted by a two-year military service, he finished his education in 1963 (MA). Under the influence of Ruben E. Reina Sharer took a course in Maya Ethnography and went to Guatemala. Under the leadership of William Robertson Coe II, he completed his doctoral thesis at Coes to excavation collection of El Trapiche in Chalchuapa. He received his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania in 1968.

While he taught from 1967 to 1972 at Pitzer College, he conducted field research in 1968-1970 Chalchuapa. After Linton Satterthwaite of the University of Pennsylvania was retired in 1972, Sharer this was first an assistant professor of anthropology and assistant curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

He did research for almost 50 years in Central America, including the pre-Columbian Maya sites Quiriguá in Guatemala ( 1974-1979 ) and Copan in Honduras ( 1988-2003 ). Gordon Willey had invited him in 1975 to create a master plan for the exploration of Copán.

With his wife, Judith ( Judy ) K. Sharer he had three children. In 1997 he married Loa P. Traxler.