Sydel Silverman: A New Virtual Finding Aid for a Scholar Committed to Anthropology’s Legacy

Abstract

Last March, a giant in the field of anthropology passed away. Sydel Silverman (1933-2019) was a scholar of Italian and other (as she called them) “complex” societies, as well as the history of anthropology. Silverman advocated for anthropology throughout her career. At the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center in the 1970s, Silverman argued that anthropology was an “essential” discipline, convincing Margaret Mead to join her fight. Silverman’s perhaps most influential contribution to the field was her leadership of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, anthropology’s most prominent funding organization, where she served as President from 1987 to 1999. Through Wenner-Gren, Silverman built anthropology’s intellectual community and reach. Silverman was also a major proponent of preserving anthropology’s legacy through archival records. She helped to found the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records (CoPAR), which published works on the topic and created a registry of anthropologists’ archival papers. This month, the NAA published a digital, keyword searchable (‘encoded’, in archives-speak) finding aid (created by Katherine Christensen) to Silverman’s collections.