Jason De León
Jason De León
Professor, Lloyd E. Cotsen Endowed Chair of Archaeology, Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
Office: 364 Haines Hall
Email: jdeleon@ucla.edu
Biography
I am an anthropologist interested in the themes of violence, materiality, masculinity, border security, Latin American migration, and public anthropology. Methodologically, my work draws on a range of methods including ethnography, photoethnography, and archaeology of the contemporary. I direct the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP), a long-term study of clandestine border crossings that uses a combination of ethnographic, archaeological, visual, and forensic approaches to understand this phenomenon in a variety of geographic contexts including the Sonoran Desert, the southern Mexico/Guatemala border, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. I am also involved in extensive exhibition work including the participatory installation Hostile Terrain 94 that has been shown in more than 160 locations across four continents.
My current projects include a photoethnographic book based on two decades of work by the Undocumented Migration Project, a study of the politics and materiality of boutique guitar pedal builders, and a book about trauma, masculinity, and the ethnographic encounter.
I hold a split faculty position in the Department of Anthropology and Chicana/o and Central American Studies. I am also Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, which is where my research lab is located (in the same room where I began my undergraduate studies under the mentorship of Professor Jeanne Arnold in the mid-1990s).
Research Interests
Violence; materiality; Latino migration; masculinity, archaeology of the contemporary; photoethnography, public anthropology
Publications
2024 J. De León Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling, Viking Press.
2023 J. De León Exposure. In Solarities: Elemental Encounters and Refractions, edited by C. Howe, J. Diamanti, and A. Moore, pps. 105-115. Society for Cultural Anthropology’s Theorizing the Contemporary series, Punctum Books.
2023 N. Smith, G. Canter, A. Shipman, C. Gokee, H. Stewart, and J. De León “Hostile Terrain 94: Using an Archaeological Sensibility to Raise Awareness about Migrant Death along the U.S.-Mexico Border,” in Archaeology Outside-the-Box, ed. H. Barnard, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, Los Angeles, California.
2021 S. Campbell-Staton, R. Walker, S. Rogers, J. De León, H. Landecker, W. Porter, P. Mathewson, and R. Long Quantifying Thermohydric Costs of Undocumented Human Migration Across the Southern United States Border. Science 374(6574):1496-1500.
2020 C. Gokee, H. Stewart, and J. De León Scales of Suffering in the U.S./Mexico Borderlands. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 24(2): 823-851.
2019 J. De León “Como Me Duele”: Central American Bodies and the Moral Economy of Undocumented Migration. In The Border and Its Bodies: The Corporeality of Risk in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, pp. 99-123, edited by T. Sheridan and R. McGuire. University of Arizona Press.
2019 J. De León and C. Gokee Lasting Value? Engaging with the Material Traces of America’s Undocumented Migration “Problem,” In Cultural Heritage, Ethics and Contemporary Migrations, eds. C. Holtorf, A. Pantazatos and G. Scarre, pp. 70-86, Routledge Press.
2018 J. De León The Photoethnographic Eye: Visualizing the Honduran Migrant Experience in Mexico. In Out of Bounds: Photography and Migration, edited by T. Sheehan, Routledge Press.
2015 J. De León. The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Sonoran Desert Migrant Trail. University of California Press, Berkeley.
2014 J. Beck, I. Ostericher, G. Sollish, and J. De León. “Scavenging Behavior in the Sonora Desert and Implications for Documenting Border Crosser Fatalities.” Journal of Forensic Sciences 60:S11-S20.
2013 J. De León. “Undocumented Migration, Use-Wear, and the Materiality of Habitual Suffering in the Sonoran Desert.” Journal of Material Culture 18(4):1-32.
2012 J. De León. “’Better To Be Hot Than Caught’: Excavating the Conflicting Roles of Migrant Material Culture.” American Anthropologist 114(3):477-495.
2009 J. De León. “Rethinking the Organization of Aztec Salt Production: A Domestic Perspective.” Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 19(1): 45-57.
2009 J. De León, K. Hirth and D. Carballo. “Exploring Formative Period Obsidian Blade Trade: Three Distribution Models.” Ancient Mesoamerica 20:113-128.
