Dr. Wallman and Dr. Bourges on campus at USF during her Fulbright. (Photo courtesy of Diane Wallman)
USF College of Arts and Sciences anthropology associate professor Dr. Diane Wallman has been named a Faculty Scholar Fulbright.
Wallman will use the Fulbright award to continue her collaborative work with colleague Dr. Caroline Borges, assistant professor of archaeology at the University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil. Borges was a Fulbright scholar who worked with Wallman at USF in the Spring of 2022 and is a member of the Núcleo de Ensino e Pesquisa Arqueológica (NEPARQ), the Center for Archaeological Education and Research, in Recife.
Wallman will be conducting historical archaeology and zooarchaeological research at the Pilar archaeological site in Recife to examine occupations dating from the 17th to 19th centuries, when the area was occupied by both the Dutch and Portuguese and served as one of the earliest and largest slave trading ports in the Americas.
“It was really meaningful to me to be supported by USF and the U.S. government and affording our mission to collaborate to forge new partnerships with different scholars around the world,” Wallman said.
Wallman and Borges previously analyzed human and animal specimens from the 17th-century Dutch occupation of the Pilar site to examine patterns of migration and diet.
For this Fulbright, she plans to focus primarily on expanding that research, but with an added component of teaching.
Dr. Borges processing samples in the laboratory during her Fulbright at USF. (Photo courtesy of Diane Wallman)
“Through this Fulbright, we will continue our established partnership, and further develop the research at Pilar to focus on the slave trade in Pernambuco and the experiences of enslaved people in the city,” Wallman explains. “Dr. Borges and I first met working on our doctorates at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and she reached out to me several years ago to join the project due to my expertise in Colonial period archaeology in the Americas, and especially my work on the archaeology and zooarchaeology of comparative slavery in the Atlantic World.”
Wallman said the area of Recife is growing and NEPARQ has been contracted to investigate the city’s cultural and historical resources.
“This project is the first major archaeological study examining a colonial port city in Brazil, a city which was central to Dutch and Portuguese interests, to the slave trade, and to the global economy,” she said. “The research in Recife is of incredible significance to understanding the workings and organization of European colonial endeavors in the Americas, as one of the earliest and most active trading ports in the post-Columbian Atlantic World.”
Wallman will travel to Brazil in January 2024 to begin the research.
She’s also serving as the advisor for the dissertation of USF anthropology doctoral candidate Jonathan Rodriguez, who was also recently selected as USF’s first student veteran recipient of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.
The ruins of the 17th century Dutch fort recovered in Recife. (Photo courtesy of Diane Wallman)
“Diane is humanistic first, scholarly second,” he said. “She’s always willing to adjust for the student and do things that will benefit them. That really helped me during the pandemic when I first took her archeology courses and decided that I wanted to continue to work with her in the future. She’s also always sharing opportunities with her students; she's the reason I applied for the McKnight Fellowship and the Fulbright. I wouldn't be able to have my dissertation project without her advice and guidance.”
Wallman said she’s excited to continue the work in Recife because of the impact it will have on helping the city to understand the importance of its history, in addition to the impact it will have on students in the future.
“The opportunity to teach students in Brazil and to learn from them and hopefully in the future to have USF students working with the students in Brazil will be just incredibly, incredibly meaningful and valuable to both institutions,” Wallman said.