Jerry Sabloff

Jerry SabloffJeremy "Jerry" Arac Sabloff (born 1944) is an American anthropologist and past president of the Santa Fe Institute. Sabloff is an expert on ancient Maya civilization and pre-industrial urbanism. His academic interests have included settlement pattern studies, archaeological theory and method, the history of archaeology, the relevance of archaeology in the modern world, complexity theory, and trans-disciplinary science.

Sabloff received his bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD in 1969 from Harvard, where his doctoral supervisor was archaeologist Gordon Willey.

He was the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the Williams Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum (1994–2004) and interim director of the museum (2006–2007). In 2010 he delivered the distinguished lecture at the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting, encouraging anthropologists to make their work accessible to their relevant publics and cultivate a new generation of scientist-communicators.

Sabloff is past president of the Society for American Archaeology, a past anthropology section chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and past editor of American Antiquity. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also is a fellow of both the Society of Antiquaries, London, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award, awarded by the Society for American Archaeology; 2014 Lucy Wharton Drexel Medal, awarded by the University of Pennsylvania Museum; 2011 Excellence in Latin American and Caribbean Archaeology Award, awarded by the Society for American Archaeology