Richard Diehl - Early Life and Academic Career

Early Life and Academic Career

Richard Diehl was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He completed his secondary education in the state system before pursuing tertiary studies at Pennsylvania State University. After first graduating with a BA in History, Diehl commenced postgraduate studies in Anthropology. In 1965 Diehl obtained his MA under the supervision of prolific archaeologist William T. Sanders, with a thesis on "The Use of Ethnographic Data for Archaeological Interpretation of the Teotihuacan Valley, Mexico". Continuing to specialise in Mesoamerican archaeology, Diehl received his PhD in 1969, with a thesis entitled "An Evaluation of Cultural Evolution in the Formative Period in Mesoamerican Prehistory", again with Sanders as his supervisor.

Diehl began his academic career with the University of Missouri (MU) in Columbia, Missouri. In 1968 he was accepted for a teaching position at MU's Department of Anthropology, which had been newly established as a separate department two years previously. Diehl remained at MU for the next 18 years, lecturing and conducting archaeological research in Guatemala and Mexico.

In 1986 Diehl left MU to join the anthropology department at Alabama as its departmental chair, a position he held until 1993. During a one-year sabbatical in 1993–94 Diehl served as acting director and curator of pre-Columbian Studies at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, in Washington, D.C.. From 1998 to 2005 Diehl served as executive director of UA's museum systems, and was director of the Alabama Museum of Natural History.