For more than a decade, John Wesley Gilbert has been acknowledged by the Society of Black Archaeologists as the first American scholar of color to overcome the barriers of late nineteenth-century racism and receive professional training in archaeological fieldwork. Yet until the publication of John W. I. Lee’s The First Black Archaeologist: A Life of John Wesley Gilbert, no single book documented the full range of Gilbert’s life or recognized his involvement in the field of archaeology. This book not only corrects that lacuna, but also delivers a thoughtful reflection on the possibilities and limitations of writing histories of individuals whose primary archival materials have not been preserved.

Enslaved at birth, Gilbert grew up in Reconstruction-era Georgia and later gained prominence not as an archaeologist but as a vocal advocate of interracial cooperation. Several major life experiences—studying and teaching at the Paine Institute in Augusta, Georgia; enrolling in and graduating from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island; and undertaking a missionary expedition with Bishop Walter Russell Lambuth in the Belgian Congo—shaped his thinking on this subject, as previous biographers have emphasized. Lee gives these episodes due attention and writes about the spaces Gilbert navigated and how they possibly impacted his thinking. What other works have failed to appreciate, though, is how Gilbert’s six-month residence in Greece, examining classical texts and exploring Hellenic ruins alongside white colleagues, contributed to his worldview and transformed him into a pioneer in the discipline of archaeology.

Gilbert’s claim to being “the first black archaeologist” rested on his experience studying at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the first American research institution opened outside the United States, between 1890 and 1891, while completing the requirements for a master’s degree in Greek in absentia from Brown University (3). (Gilbert also holds the distinction of being the second person to receive that degree from that institution.) As Lee vividly demonstrates, while in southern Europe Gilbert did more than devote himself to a thesis on the demes—urban neighborhoods—of Athenian antiquity: he toured historical sites like Marathon, rubbed shoulders with King George I, and, most critically, helped produce a topographical survey of ancient Eretria, where the American School conducted one of its first excavations. This research placed him at the center of a growing American presence in the Mediterranean and at the forefront of disciplinary experimentation with new forms of knowledge production.

These six months, however, did not end with widespread recognition of Gilbert as a leading archaeologist. Despite references to him as “the finest Greek scholar in the South,” Gilbert soon pivoted away from a career studying antiquities and toward education, ministerial, and missionary work (214). This shift mirrored the movement of other Black scholars, like W. E. B. Du Bois and John Hope, from teaching classical languages to instead promoting subjects like history, science, and English. As Gilbert increasingly dedicated his time to other projects, his involvement in archaeological research faded. The American School and its parent organization, the Archaeological Institute of America, also lost touch with and interest in him after 1900. Neither appeared to notice his passing in 1925.

Writing and researching Gilbert’s life, whether in Augusta or Athens, is no small task. Fires, floods, and other fateful occurrences have destroyed many of the main archival materials associated with the archaeologist. While Gilbert’s voice shines through occasionally, like in his signature to open an account with the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, his silence features just as prominently. Despite these obstacles, Lee has compiled an impressive array of records, from the two surviving copies of the Paine Institute’s newspaper from the nineteenth century to the manuscript collections of Gilbert’s colleagues at the American School now dispersed across repositories in three countries, which supplement the traces of Gilbert’s thoughts that do remain. The author deserves every bit of praise in bringing together all these materials.

All this, however, raises a difficult question: does Gilbert’s story carry significance beyond his important and fitting title as the “first black archaeologist?” In the past decade, a growing number of studies have documented the lives and contributions of forgotten and erased figures central to the development of modern academic disciplines, provoking critical reflections on the foundations of contemporary scientific and humanistic inquiry as well as the paths not taken in those fields. While the importance of Gilbert’s thesis and his role in the Eretria excavation cannot be discounted, they alone offer little sense of how the discipline might have developed differently had Gilbert remained a presence in professional archaeological circles. And yet Gilbert’s presence cannot be cast aside as insignificant, either. His story reveals how Black Americans played a role in the production of archaeological scholarship and the formation of a professional disciplinary community in the late nineteenth century; moreover, the writings of Gilbert’s contemporaries reveal the symbolic importance placed on his attendance at the American School as well as his research into the foundations of classical civilization. At a time when white academics still comprise the vast majority of professional archaeologists, this history—and that of a previous generation of scholars’ failure to train and cultivate more Black archaeologists—certainly matters.

John W. I. Lee’s The First Black Archaeologist deserves a wide readership. More than a biography, this book offers a readable narrative of historical change surrounding Black life, the classics, and the idea of interracial cooperation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both within the United States and beyond. Lee’s meditations on how certain sources have survived and his close analysis of images—his examination of two photographs of Brown University’s class of 1888 being especially interesting—also make this a perfect resource for introducing undergraduates to research methods. Most importantly, though, Lee has ensured that Gilbert’s connections to archaeology will no longer constitute a footnote in either his biography or the history of the discipline.