In Memoriam: Mark P. Leone

We are very sad to report the loss of our colleague Mark Leone who died on December 11, 2024. Mark was a highly influential historical archaeologist and a distinguished and innovative theorist. He was also a friend and mentor who had served on our board since the journal’s founding. We had the privilege of knowing Mark for many years. We were also fortunate to have known his dear wife, Nan Wells, who passed away in 2018. He is survived by his beloved daughter Vika and his much cherished grandson.Mark’s absence will be deeply felt by the archaeological community both here and abroad. Archaeologists all over the world were inspired by Mark’s use of Critical Theory to analyze the underlying meanings of material remains (Leone 1982; Leone et. al. 1987). His innovative excavations in Annapolis, Maryland, which he directed from 1981 to his death, paved the way in many respects for the methodology of Public Archaeology, in establishing strong relationships with living communities whose past was being uncovered (Leone and Parker 1988; Leone 2005).Even though he never worked in our region, he had a strong interest in the past and present of the Middle East. He was very much involved in attempting to establish an affiliation between the University of Maryland and the Biblical Archaeology Society some years ago and wrote enthusiastically to us that “It has taken two years to achieve this, and a partnership has been created” (Leone, email communication, January 22, 2018). Though the partnership was not to last, Mark retained his enthusiasm for eastern Mediterranean archaeology and remained proud of his association with the journal.Mark was a gifted teacher at the University of Maryland in anthropology, cultural heritage, and African American studies for almost five decades, and many of his students remained in touch with him long after they achieved their degrees. In 2019, he was awarded the title of Distinguished University Professor, the highest academic honor that the University bestows on a faculty member. In addition to his excavations at Annapolis, he directed projects that explored “The Hill,” an African American community in Easton, Maryland; Wye House, where Frederick Douglass was enslaved; and William Paca’s Wye Hall on Wye Island.Mark’s contributions to recovering the African American past are inestimable, but it was his work with living communities that mattered most to him. Early in his career, Mark saw that it was the local stories of the past that were the most interconnected with the present—not the regional, national, or international narratives that became the stuff of standard histories. Combining discourse, oral history, and the remarks and reminiscences of his living interlocutors, with the evidence emerging from the ground, Mark and his diverse team of investigators engaged in an ongoing and interactive exploration of power, class, and race relations. As they continued to explore these sites, they elicited opinions, questions, and anecdotes from each other and from members of the community at various steps in the process. What Leone and the other project coordinators accomplished in these spaces was nothing less than the restoration of a forgotten history and the reconstruction of collective memory.Despite the intellectual rigor with which he approached the practice of archaeology, Mark was quite down-to-earth in explaining his career in a wide-ranging interview on the subject with Michael Shanks some years ago. Responding to Shanks’s question about what future generations would draw from his work and what factors most influenced him, Mark replied:That “something” turned out to be a long and fruitful career in archaeology that beneficially and profoundly changed the discipline.