The Anna O. Shepard Award, honors this scientist’s pioneering work in the analysis and description of pottery and ceramics from 1930 to 1973. Her technical foundation serves to integrate multiple methods of analysis in order to describe the chemical, physical and crystallographic properties of art and archaeological materials, the geological and natural resources used in their fabrication, and the archaeological and artistic interpretation of these data.
Anna Shepard at an archaeological site on the Hopi Reservation. Her research on the ceramics recovered from this site demonstrated that local clays were the source materials for the pottery. The firing experiments that she conducted are the basis for reconstructing the fuel sources and firing conditions used, as well as determining how various firing conditions affected the color of the finished pottery for different clay sources. Both photographs were taken by Harriet Cosgrove, an important early archaeological excavator in the American Southwest.
This award is presented by the AACS Division Executive Committee of ACerS to an individual(s), who has made outstanding contributions to materials science applied to art, archaeology, architecture, or cultural heritage. The contributions could be an artistic creation, an archaeological study, or significant materials research. Neither ACerS nor AACS membership is required to receive this award.
The Anna O. Shepard Award consists of a certificate of recognition, a $500 honorarium*, and a one-year membership in ACerS and the AACS Division for the award recipient(s).
Selection criteria will emphasize:
- interrelated scientific inquiry and archaeological/cultural heritage materials study;2
- collaborative and original approach to analytical methods;
- investigation of interdependent relationships among chemical, physical and mineralogical properties of geological and environmental resources and material production;
- experimental reverse engineering of materials in field or laboratory settings;1, 2
- and / or significance to the nominee’s field.
Anna O. Shepard Presentation at the Pan American Ceramics Congress and Ferroelectrics Meeting of Americas (PACC-FMAs 2022)
Listen to a presentation at the 2022 PACC-FMAs meeting in Panama City that describes the materials science contributions of Anna O. Shepard from the 1930s to the early 1970s.
Jackson, M. D., C. Bisulca, “Anna O. Shepard (1903–1973): Materials Science Methods in Archaeological Ceramic Analysis.” PACC-FMAs Conference, PACC11: Materials Approach to Art, Architecture, and Archaeology in The Americas: Petrography & Technology, Abstract # 3720987, 26 July 2022, Panama City, Panama (2022)
Donate to the Anna O. Shepard Fund
*The division intends to support the award through ACerS annual division funds allocation as well as donations from the ACerS community. We are asking for donations for this award from ACerS members as well as industries. A donation to this award will be deposited in a specific fund for this purpose only.
You can send a check, made payable to The American Ceramic Society (add a note that your donation is for the “Anna O. Shepard Award”) and mail to:
The American Ceramic Society
Attn: Ms. Erica Zimmerman
550 Polaris Parkway, Suite 510
Westerville, OH 43082
Alternatively, if you would like to donate using your credit card, you may click on the button below:
References
1 Shepard, A. O. Ceramics for the Archaeologist. Publication 609, Carnegie Institute of Washington, Washington D.C., fifth edition (1965).
2 Shepard, A. O. “Ceramic Analysis: The lnterrrelations of Method; The Relationships of Analysts and Archaeologists.” Science and Archaeology, Edited by R. L. Brill, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 55–63 (1971).
Anna Shepard at an archaeological site on the Hopi Reservation. Her research on the ceramics recovered from this site demonstrated that local clays were the source materials for the pottery. The firing experiments that she conducted are the basis for reconstructing the fuel sources and firing conditions used, as well as determining how various firing conditions affected the color of the finished pottery for different clay sources. Both photographs were taken by Harriet Cosgrove, an important early archaeological excavator in the American Southwest.
Anna Shepard reading a pyrometer to determine firing temperature. Coal firing experiments shown in the foreground, 1938-39. ©President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 2004.1.123.1.1890 https://www.peabody.harvard.edu/
Anna Shepard removing ceramic plaques after one of her firing experiments, 1938-39. ©President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 2004.1.123.1.1886 https://www.peabody.harvard.edu/
Nomination Process
Submit the candidate’s curriculum vitae and a cover letter electronically to the AACS Division Chair by January 15 annually.
Christina Bisulca
CBisulca@dia.org
2025-2026 AACS Division Chair
Award Winners
2024 Award Winner
Chandra L. Reedy
Chandra L. Reedy is a Professor of Historic Preservation at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware. Her primary appointment is in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy & Administration, where she serves as the Director of its Center for Historic Architecture and Design and runs the Laboratory for Analysis of Cultural Materials. She is also an affiliated faculty member in the departments of Anthropology and Art History, and in the Asian Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA’s interdepartmental Archaeology Program in 1986, staying in Los Angeles for several years afterwards as a conservation scientist at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She moved to the University of Delaware in 1989, first teaching in the Art Conservation Department and Museum Studies Program before taking up her current positions in 2007.
She is the author of four books, including Thin-Section Petrography of Stone and Ceramic Cultural Materials (London: Archetype Publications, 2008); co-author of three edited volumes; and author or co-author of 90 professional articles. Her research focuses on developing new methods for documenting, preserving, and understanding the cultural context of traditional materials and technologies and their associated intangible cultural heritage. For the past 14 years she has been the Editor-in-Chief of Studies in Conservation, the flagship journal of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works in London (elected Fellow in 2016). Within ACerS she is affiliated with the Art, Archaeology and Conservation Science Division.
Most recently she has concentrated on analysis of Asian ceramics, combining fieldwork at traditional workshops in Sichuan Province, China and in Akita, Japan, with laboratory research on materials collected in the field.
2022 Award Winner
Pamela Vandiver
For the last twenty-two years, Pamela B. Vandiver has been Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Co-Director of the Program in Heritage Conservation Science, Head of the Laboratory for Cultural Materials, and Adjunct Professor in Anthropology at the University of Arizona. From 1985 through 2003, she was senior research scientist in ceramics at the Conservation Analytical Laboratory of the Smithsonian Institution. Prior to 1985, she spent thirteen years at M.I.T where she started the MIT Glass Lab (which is about to turn 50), completed the S.M. and Ph.D. in MSE, helped David Kingery and Frederick Matson organize the nine volume Ceramics and Civilization series and co-authored with W.D. Kingery the book Ceramic Masterpieces (a second edition will be published in 2023 by Wiley). Vandiver obtained a B.A. in history, art and Asian studies from Scripps College and a M.A. that included blown art glass, cast bronze and large ceramic sculptures. In 1989 she and Edward Sayre began the MRS symposium series, Materials Issues in Art and Archaeology; she has organized and co-edited all 11 volumes. In 2006 the Archaeological Institute of America presented the Pomerance Medal for her contributions to the field of archaeological science. She has published 224 papers that include: reconstructing the technology and use of the earliest ceramic figurines from 26,000 years ago, the processing and application by drawing of wet and dry pigments at Lascaux and other Paleolithic period caves in France, reverse engineering the plaster technologies in the pre-pottery Neolithic period and its development into pottery using the technology of sequential slab construction that was communicated throughout Southwest Asia, from Ukraine to Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt by 6400 BCE. Other research focii include the beginnings of glass technology in Egyptian and Mesopotamian faience and other glassy materials from ca. 4000-1500 BCE, the medieval glaze technology of Central Asia based on Ishkor plant ash, Chinese, Korean and Japanese high-temperature glazes, phase-separated glazes of Song dynasty, some European and American ceramics, Neolithic Yangshao and Longshan pottery production, Iron Age Kazakh pottery and Greek amphora from Corinth. Recently Vandiver, an ACerS Fellow, has headed the Art, Archaeology and Conservation Science Division of the ACerS, and some years ago, the Kingery award committee.