Stephen L. Zegura (2 July 1943–26 May 2019)

Abstract

1 Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. 2 Human Evolution Research Institute, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. 3 Department of Anthropology, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California, USA. 4 ARL Division of Biotechnology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA. 5 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA. *Correspondence to: Rebecca Rogers Ackermann, University of Cape Town, Department of Archaeology, Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town, South Africa. E-mail: becky.ackermann@uct.ac.za. KEY WORDS: stephen l. zegura, obituary, anthropology. Human Biology, Winter 2019, v. 91, no. 1. doi: 10.13110/humanbiology91.1.03. Copyright © 2019 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201 in memoriam Stephen L. Zegura (2 July 1943–26 May 2019) Rebecca Rogers Ackermann,1,2 * Michelle Bezanson,3 Michael Hammer,4 and David Raichlen5 Stephen L. Zegura passed away on 26 May 2019 at the age of 75. Born in San Francisco, California, Zegura was the eldest child of Dragomir Božo Zegura and Adele (June) PerelliMinetti . He earned his BA in anthropology, magna cum laude and with departmental honors, at Stanford University. Even as an undergraduate at Stanford , Zegura was extremely active, brainstorming creativewaystocreateanacademiccareerfocusing onthestudyof humans.Hisenergeticappreciation for Stanford and the inspirational professors he met there was often shared with his students—he was a devoted Cardinal. He then moved to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was a WoodrowWilson Fellow, and received his master’s degree and doctorate in human biology in 1971. His PhD research focused on multivariate analyses of variation in native Alaskan (“Eskimo”) crania. Zegura relocated briefly to New York University before moving to the University of Arizona (U of A) in Tucson, where he stayed for the remainder of his career and life. For nearly 40 years Zegura taught biological anthropology, human evolution, andhumangeneticsatUof A.Hewastherecipient of the 2009–2010 Raymond H. Thompson Award in honor of his distinguished service and contributions he made to the School of Anthropology throughout his career. How do you measure the impact of a life, especially for someone as alive—as large as life— as Steve Zegura was? He was brilliant and tough and kind and generous. He was mischievous, with a slightly irreverent sense of humor. He was an extraordinary teacher, with a sharp intellect and a passion for sharing knowledge. And Zegura was an exceptional scholar, presenting theoretically rigorous and well-written contributions, with approximately 50 journal articles to his name. He leaves behind important contributions to knowledgeintheseresearchoutputs ,andhere,wereflect on the arc of these outputs and their relevance then and now. Zegura’s fijirst works focused on measuring skulls and applying statistical methods to diffferentiate them from one another and from other groups (Zegura 1971), a popular pastime in biological /physical anthropology since the discipline developed in the 1800s, and one that has deep links to racial science (Gould 1981; Sussman 2014) . Even at this early stage, Zegura displayed two traits that continued to shine throughout his research career: meticulous attention to detail and a creative ability to synthesize disparate methodologies into a coherent framework for hypothesis testing. While many skeletal biologists were continuing to use older, traditional methods to examine skeletal variation in human populations, Zegura was quick to include linguistic analyses in his studies, FIGURE 1. Stephen Zegura, early 1970s. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Chesney Zegura. 000 ■ Ackermann et al. examining degrees of correlation between these distinct data sets (Zegura 1975). This early work on Inuit populations led to numerous highly regarded publications. By integrating linguistics and skeletal biology, Zegura was ahead of the curve, and today this work is considered highly creative andsynthetic.Zegurawasalsoanearlycontributor to our understanding of inter- and intraobserver measurementerrorincraniometricstudiesandthe importance of conducting baseline measurement error analyses in order to accurately interpret the biological signifijicance of any results (Utermohle andZegura1982;Utermohleetal.1983),atopicthat still garners considerable attention (e.g., Robinson and Terhune 2017). Ultimately,Zegura’sintereststurnedtobroader questions that highlighted the degree to which racial typology and theoretical approaches had limited the research focus of the study of prehistory in the North American Arctic (Schindler et al. 1985). In this, he was in keeping with the general movement away from typological “racial...