Anthropologist Receives Top Award

Emory Wheel

George Armelagos, professor and chair of anthropology at Emory, won the 2008 Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology, the highest honor given by the American Anthropological Association (AAA). . .

Armelagos has been involved with the AAA for more than 50 years and has worked at Emory since 1993.

Armelagos specializes in physical anthropology, skeletal biology, demography and the evolution of disease in the Mediterranean and African regions.
Friend and colleague, anthropology professor Peter Brown, said that Armelagos has spent his career demonstrating that race is not a good biological concept, noting that racism is an important social fact that can have negative social impacts.

Brown said that one of the most notable contributions to the discipline of anthropology by Armelagos was to help develop AAA’s statement on race.
Armelagos also studies diet and disease, specifically their effects on the course of human development.

Armelagos said he has spent years of study focusing on the area of Sudanese Nubia, where he analyzed the evolution of diet and disease in prehistory. It was in this area that Armelagos discovered 1,500-year-old evidence of the use of tetracycline, an antibiotic.