James W. Meierhoff

James Meierhoff earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Meierhoff’s dissertation research was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and combined historical and archaeological techniques to investigate a nineteenth century Maya refugee village located at the ruins of Tikal, Guatemala. Meierhoff was trained in archaeological field techniques while acting as an excavation supervisor on a multi-season project studying the ancient Maya in western Belize, and he has since supervised or led excavations in Peru, Guatemala, Arizona, Philippines, and multiple Cultural Resource Management (CRM) projects in the USA. Meierhoff has co-led historical archaeological investigations at battlefield locations related to the Black Hawk War of 1832 and has an ongoing research project studying World War II German Prisoner of War camps around Chicago. He is an author on several publications in peer-reviewed journals and book collaborations on topics ranging from compositional analysis of ancient artifacts to ethnohistorical issues relating to nineteenth century Central America. Meierhoff actively presents his research at national conferences and to more general audiences at public libraries, historical societies, and veterans’ organizations. In his current position, Meierhoff serves as a researcher and field archaeologist for UIC-DPAA (Defense Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency) projects. Having completed the DPAA’s Scientific Recovery Expert (SRE) training, in 2019 Meierhoff led a UIC-DPAA recovery mission in Sicily, Italy, and has been a lead archaeologist in the Philippines since 2022.

Meierhoff, James, Paula Bryant, and Artur Stasiek. 2024. “The Nuts and Bolts of Plates and Cups: Provisioning a Historic CCC/WWII POW Camp in Chicago’s Northwest Suburbs”. Illinois Antiquity, Volume 59, Issue 2. Editor Dale Simpson Jr. Pp 7-10.

Meierhoff, James. 2022. “The Final Frontier, Nineteenth Century Maya Refugees at Tikal, Guatemala” In Coloniality in the Maya Lowlands: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by Kasey Diserens Morgan and Tiffany C. Cain, 171-191. Louisville: University Press of Colorado.