Retired UC anthropologist inspired countless students
Vern Scarborough isn’t slowing down after 40-year career
As Vern Scarborough looks back on big chunks of his life spent living in the trenches of the American Southwest or staring up at the stars from a hammock in the rainforests of Guatemala, he says he wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
After all, 40 years of digging through historical dirt is what led Scarborough to a mother lode of evidence for how humans managed thousands of years ago and how that ancient wisdom can apply today.
Following the last three decades as an anthropologist, a Charles Phelps Taft professor and two-term department head at the University of Cincinnati, Scarborough decided to retire in the spring of 2018 but not slow down. Instead he will trade in his classroom for a global stage, sharing his research on ancient water management and how the past can successfully inform the future.
He credits much of his success to the generosity of UC and the Department of Anthropology.
"When compared to lateral moves by some of my former colleagues, we all agree that the autonomy we enjoyed at UC as professionals and as researchers doesn’t get much better,” says Scarborough.
“We had the freedom to form collaborative teams with colleagues across the campus, which is priceless for idea generation, research and publication and especially great for our students because we were able to do things with them.”
As a professor, Scarborough says teaching anthropology and archaeology was his job, but his mission was to inspire his students to be the best they could be. To do this, he reached out to them in ways that would challenge them to think outside the box. This often included seeing the world — and not always from a hotel.
“Sometimes the answers to our questions are miles from civilization,” he says. “So camping in remote areas to get historical evidence becomes a way of life for researchers.”
Already a seasoned pro at sleeping under the open sky, Scarborough recalls roughing it for more than six years as a grad student investigating the ancient Maya town of Cerros in Belize.
“I spent many restless nights rocking in a hammock slung between two posts or from a stucco building with a thatched roof,” says Scarborough. “But looking up at the stars was incredibly therapeutic and sometimes the best way to recoup from long days deep in the Maya trenches.”
Right out of graduate school, Scarborough found the job market for anthropologists pretty dim, so he began his career teaching at the University of Khartoum in Sudan.
With an Africanist background from earlier studies of South Africa, Scarborough gained a rich new worldview through this, and other adventures he couldn’t have experienced from a classroom.
“On one particular trip to Darfur near the Chadian border, I remember sticking out like a sore thumb in a tiny village where no one had ever seen blue eyes or my skin color up close,” he says.
“As a gesture of thoughtfulness, they arranged for a banquet in my honor and butchered a goat. To my surprise, they graciously handed me a bowl full of goat viscera — a delicacy to them but a bowl of glistening goat organs and all kinds of other unappealing things to me.
“By the time it reached my mouth I immediately turned the same color as the goat viscera and they all broke out in laughter.”
All ended well that night, but Scarborough’s memories of how the Sudanese and people from around the world were so thoughtful and giving while they had so little always stuck with him.
After receiving a Fulbright award to teach in Pakistan, Scarborough's global adventures continued.
While working in ancient Pakistani cities dating to about 2500 B.C. — some of the earliest on the planet — Scarborough recalls living in present-day war-torn areas near the Khyber Pass on the Afghanistan border.
He describes it as a time when the Taliban or Mujahedeen (Freedom Fighters then) were friends and allies of America.
“Afghanistan remains a turbulent place, and I have incredible stories having lived there on the border,” says Scarborough. “Since being at UC, one of the things I regret most is not being part of the forums that were held on these issues, drawing from scholars who have reported on those troubled areas.
“Having lived in those war-torn places I saw a lot and have strong opinions about what the U.S. does and has not done in those regions. Given our worldview we still have a great deal of miscommunication and a sheltered approach for remedying turbulence.”
Building a legacy
By 1988, Scarborough landed his academic position at UC through the help of Rhoda Halperin, head of the department of anthropology and dear friend and former colleague Barry Isaac; both described as two of the smartest ethnographers UC has ever had.
"I feel so fortunate and am continually grateful to Drs. Halperin and Isaac for hiring me in 1988 and giving me this marvelous life," he notes.
Throughout his career, Scarborough appreciated the freedom to participate in several fellowships around the world.
He describes the privilege to get out into the field as critical for seeing life from different angles and gaining diverse perspectives for anthropological research.
“Much of our research from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and the American Southwest looked at how ancient societies more than 1,000 years ago were able to live and support themselves in such an arid environment,” says Scarborough.
“Using tools such as sediment dating and LIDAR scanning from the air we revealed buried canals that were once effective water management efforts by this indigenous society to preserve water and irrigate corn crops grown in saline-rich soils.”
“Working with grad students like Jon-Paul McCool, Samantha Fladd and our colleagues from around Arts and Sciences helped dispel prior studies that claim these soils were too salty, dry and could not have supported human life all year long.”
This research added to the team's collaborative momentum with their most recent paper published in the August issue of the journal Antiquity, “Water uncertainty, ritual predictability and agricultural canals at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.”
Looking closely at ancient water management in the American Southwest, Bali, Greece, Pakistan, Sudan and the ancient Maya area helped launch Scarborough’s success for mentoring students, several journal publications and led to his widely cited book, “The Flow of Power.”
His most recent UNESCO book volume combining the work of 47 experts from around the world titled “Water and its Global Legacy,” is currently in publication.
While his recall of academe and the professors of his generation is warm, he says a mix of old and new blood is vital to the success of academic departments and the time to retire seemed right.
He’ll be institutionally retired, he says, but plans to stay involved with team members such as Nick Dunning, Lewis Owen, David Lentz, Brooke Crowley, Chris Carr and new department head Sarah Jackson.
“As the team I worked with begins to retire and go through the system there is another generation that dovetails and accommodates that kind of research,” says Scarborough. “I’m optimistic that the folks in anthropology can take the baton and keep running.”
Water's hope
While continuing his role in IHOPE (Integrated History of People on Earth) discussing how the past can inform the future, Scarborough serves on the review board of Cambridge Press looking at sustainability issues, edits a high-impact water journal called Wire’s Water and has several speaking engagements scheduled around the world.
He is also writing a book on human cooperation and how it affects present-day populations.
Now permanently living in Santa Fe — the only home he and his wife have ever owned — Scarborough can look out over long vistas of New Mexico’s mountainous terrain.
“It’s a lot like the never-ending views over the ocean that I could see as a kid growing up on the Oregon coast,” says Scarborough.
“Without a lot of trees to my back unlike we have in Cincinnati, I can see for miles over the hills and valleys in the arid Southwest. And my interests in water and sustainability here are at the forefront of everyone’s minds, which continues to keep me engaged.”
While reflecting on the Southwest horizon, he says he’s not just sitting around eating bonbons.
“I’ll be traveling and sharing my research on how water infrastructure affects social organization in different ways,” he adds.
“With the internet, we are communicating more and better, even with the two steps forward and one step back that its political abuse brings. Attention to diversity has exponentially improved, bringing more sensitivity, understanding and a healthier interaction to our human equation, though tribalism surely continues,” says Scarborough.
“When you look at our trajectory through time, we’ve gotten much better as human beings. Even when you consider WWI, WWII or our own great Civil War, to say nothing of the issues we currently face around the world, we are still much better than we have been in the past.
"If we can successfully manage water, the Earth’s resources and one another, we may well make it yet."
Featured image at top: Retired UC anthropologist Vern Scarborough demonstrates how man-made water canals helped sustain life and grow crops in ancient arid environments. photo/Joseph Fuqua II/UC Creative Services
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