Carmel Schrire facts for kids

Carmel Schrire, born on May 15, 1941, is a well-known professor of anthropology at Rutgers University. Anthropology is the study of humans, both past and present. Professor Schrire's work mainly focuses on historical archaeology, which means she studies history by digging up old objects and sites. She has done a lot of research in South Africa and Europe.

Discovering the Past

Carmel Schrire was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She started her university studies at the University of Cape Town and later went to the University of Cambridge in England.

Early in her career, she was very interested in prehistoric archaeology. This is the study of times before written history. For her advanced university degree, she researched in Australia's Northern Territory. She studied how the actions of modern Aboriginal people could help understand ancient remains. She earned her PhD, a high-level university degree, in 1968 from the Australian National University.

In 1984, Professor Schrire began a special project. She started looking into the historical archaeology of how Europeans first arrived and settled in the Cape region of South Africa.

Her 1995 book, Digging through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist, explores how unfair treatment and prejudice affected people during the time of colonialism. In 2004, she also worked on an important archaeological dig in Oświęcim, Poland.