Memory and Nation Building

Michael L. Galaty is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and directs the University of Michigan's Museum of Anthropological Archaeology. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He directs collaborative field research projects in Albania and Greece, and, beginning in 2018, in Kosovo. From 1998-2003 he co-directed the Mallakastra Regional Archaeological Project (MRAP) in central Albania, a program of survey and excavation in the hinterland of the Greek colonial city of Apollonia. From 2004-2008, he co-directed the Shala Valley Project (SVP), an interdisciplinary regional research project focused on the Shala Valley of northern highland Albania. The SVP final report, titled Light and Shadow: Isolation and Interaction in the Shala Valley of Northern Albania, won the Society for American Archaeology's 2013 Scholarly Book Award. From 2010-2014, he co-directed the Projekti Arkeologjik i Shkodres (PASH), focused on the northern Albanian region of Shkodra, and The Diros Project, focused on Alepotrypa Cave in the Mani, Greece.
Galaty has primary interests in the archaeology of complex societies and the formation of social inequalities. His work is strongly interdisciplinary and focused on regional landscapes. A trained archaeometrist, he often employs scientific methods, including petrography, mass spectroscopy, and portable x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to study interactions between archaeological populations. He has published numerous edited volumes, including Rethinking Mycenaean Palaces, Archaeology Under Dictatorship, and Archaic State Interaction. The latter was the result of an Advanced Seminar at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has published nearly 100 articles on topics ranging from Albanian bunkers to Greek-Egyptian trade.