Sad News: Robert "Bob" Zeitlin
Dear Colleagues,
We recently learned the sad news that Robert N. Zeitlin, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, passed away at his home in Maine on June 6, 2025 at the age of 89.
Bob retired from Brandeis in 2001 after 25 years teaching undergraduate and graduate students. Trained at Yale (where he met his wife and frequent collaborator, Judith Francis Zeitlin), he was a Mesoamerican archaeologist, long interested in the early development of complex society and how interregional exchange, primarily in obsidian, contributed to its maintenance. Most of Bob’s field research was focused on Mexico’s southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec, but he also worked with the late RS MacNeish excavating pre-agricultural sites in Belize.
Bob was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1935. After graduating from Cornell in 1957 and pursuing a postgraduate BS in Engineering at Boston University, he served in the United States Navy. His final assignment, as intelligence officer on the USS Galveston, found him deployed in the Caribbean at the height of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. After completing his service, Bob returned to a desk job with a New York engineering company, but found this work unsatisfying and began pursuing other career options. A chance conversation led him to a master’s degree in anthropology at Hunter College and then on to Yale, where he received his PhD.
During his tenure at Brandeis, Bob inspired many students in archaeological practice. He was also a great mentor to new faculty. Whether teaching theory, analyzing in his laboratory materials from his projects in Mexico and Belize, or implementing nascent digital tools in the field, he always conveyed a sense of awe while studying the past. His educational and social commitments with archaeology saw him seeking ways for the Anthropology Department to create synergies with MIT (through the Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology), and with the Waltham community. For years he collaborated with the Waltham Public School system to bring flocks of excited elementary students for a day of fun learning at Sibley Farm, one of the archaeological sites near campus that Bob explored for years while teaching archaeological field methods.
In his post-retirement years, Bob turned his attention to local environmental and community issues in Maine—serving on the board of the Medomak Valley Land Trust and creating a community-accessible woodland through the Martin Point Wildlife Preserve.
Bob is survived by his wife, Judith, his sons, Andrew and Jeremy, his granddaughters, Noemi and Zoe, and his sister and brother-in-law, Ruth and Gerry Fischbach. I am grateful to Bob’s family and to Sarah Lamb and Javier Urcid of the Department of Anthropology for their contributions to this memoriam.
The family asks that any contributions in Bob Zeitlin’s memory be made to a preferred environmental non-profit organization.
Sincerely,
Carol A. Fierke
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs