Going Grassroots: A Conversation with Anthropology Assistant Professor Tiffany Fryer

This article is part of an ongoing series spotlighting assistant professors in the anthropology department.

Assistant Professor Tiffany Fryer grew up enamored with the TV shows on PBS, National Geographic, and the Discovery and History channels. 

“My parents worked a lot,” Fryer said. “I wasn’t allowed to watch a lot of cartoons, but they didn’t care if I watched educational stuff, so I met archaeology that way. Most of that content, though, at that time was focused on Old World archaeology, so for a long time I thought, ‘I’m going to do that.’” 

Fryer attended Stanford University with the goal of becoming a classical archaeologist until a course on global heritage politics changed her mind.

“Thinking about the ways that nationalism has related to and used archaeology for its own purposes, or the ways that archaeology can end up at the center of wars — sort of the politicizing of archaeology — I got super interested in that space,” she explained.

After completing a coterminal master’s program, Fryer worked in cultural resource management in the San Francisco Bay Area. Then, encouraged by her former fellowship program to pursue a Ph.D., she made the move from Oakland to the University of Pennsylvania. Fryer was (and still is) committed to a community-based archaeological practice, working closely with residents of a place to explore questions that interest them as well as her. Serendipitously, her graduate adviser, Professor Richard Leventhal, had recently launched the Penn Cultural Heritage Center to support grassroots projects that aim to be less extractive than archaeology has historically been. Leventhal introduced Fryer to research work in the Yucatán region of Mexico, which remains her primary focus today. 

While the deep Maya past is widely studied by archaeologists, Fryer is one of a smaller number concerned with the more recent Maya past. She works in the town of Tihosuco, known for its pivotal role in the Caste War of Yucatán (aka the Maya Social War) during the late half of the 19th century. 

“Folks in Tihosuco were already doing a lot of culture and heritage work around their participation in that conflict and the ways that conflict has affected their lives today,” Fryer said. “The idea was that we could work together to explore some of the places on the landscape that were emblematic of that history but that people, because of the impact of the war, really didn’t have a lot of formal knowledge about.”

Those places were depopulated towns, former ranches and plantations, and other sites of significance in what Fryer refers to as the “regional imaginary.” At first, locals took Fryer to two different locations to survey and map, which led to additional invitations to previously undocumented sites.

“We ended up with this map of, like, 40 places in the landscape that I thought had two on it when I started working there,” she said.

In addition to mapping the area, Fryer and her team documented sites with photos and videos, creating a register that could be a resource for Tihosuco’s landholders. Such records were previously only owned and maintained by foreign or government entities. This cooperative effort to understand the footprint of the land has helped inform conservation efforts and enhanced locals’ understanding of the importance of their home in the war that led to the three states of the Yucatán Peninsula. 

Fryer admits that teaching anthropological archaeology is a bit like having her own show on the channels she loved as a kid. So far, she has taught “Black and Indigenous Archaeologies,” “Surfaces: Research Seminar in Historical Archaeology” (supported by the Inclusive History Project), and the “Frauds and Fantastic Claims in Archaeology” course made famous by Lecturer Lisa Young.

“It’s basically our ‘archaeology and pseudoscience’ class,” said Fryer of “Frauds and Fantastic Claims.” “We spend a lot of time thinking about how to parse myths and disinformation. I open the class with Bigfoot, it’s so fun. We talk about Atlantis, we talk about whether there were ancient aliens that came to Earth.”

Fryer is also advancing campus conversations about community-based practices. With colleague Geoff Emberling, research scientist at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, she cofounded the Center for Community Archaeology and Heritage (CCAH), a centralized space for those interested in sharing and implementing community-engaged approaches to heritage work. 

“We’re interested in working with folks across other spaces: history, art history, Middle East studies, architecture, information,” Fryer explained. “These conversations are happening all across campus, and we wanted a place where we could centralize them.”

She was gratified by the interest and energy around the center’s inaugural conference last year, which, in full-circle fashion, included keynote addresses by her old graduate adviser, Leventhal, and U-M alumna Sonya Atalay. 

Fryer’s advice to students: Don’t underestimate the unique life experiences you bring to your studies — they are the tools of your anthropological trade.

“I talk to students all the time who had entirely different careers before deciding to go to graduate school,” she said. “There’s a set of skills that you’re bringing to the table that no one else is. Don’t underestimate your suite of experiences.”