William Meacham () is an American archaeologist living and working in Hong Kong since 1970. Meacham has written several books on archaeology in southern China.From a presentation of Meacham when presenting an article at the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine at The University of Hong Kong
In 1977, he published an article on South China archaeology in the journal Current Anthropology,"Continuity and local evolution in the Neolithic of South China: a non-nuclear approach". Current Anthropology. by William Meacham. 1977 18(3): 419–440 opposing the then general consensus that innovations spread south from the Central Plains of North China. This "nuclear area hypothesis" was promoted by Kwang-chih Chang, the prominent doyen of ancient China archaeology. In 2000, in a preface to his own Festschrift, Chang acknowledged: "On the concept of 'Regional Cultures,' I was very much a late-comer. Judith Treistman (1972) and William Meacham (1977) were both pioneers on this question.""Reflections on Chinese Archaeology in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century". Journal of East Asian Archaeology. by Kwang-Chih Chang. 2001 3(1):5–19
Meacham has written several papersWilliam Meacham, "The Authentication of the Turin Shroud, An Issue in Archeological Epistemology", Current Anthropology, 1983 24(3): 283–311 and a bookWilliam Meacham, The Rape of the Turin Shroud, 2005, on the restoration of the Shroud of Turin in 2002, where Meacham is questioning the restoration methods used by the Catholic Church.
He located a Confederate burial ground of 227 soldiers in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.Initial report in the Washington Timeslatest report by Nashville TV station In researching the epidemic that killed these soldiers encamped at Hopkinsville in 1861, Meacham developed a hypothesis that the disease, at the time called "Black Measles", was influenza. He published a lengthy article on the subject.William Meacham, "Was measles a powerful killer, as widely believed, during the Civil War?" Journal of Civil War Medicine 17(4):163–182, October–December 2013. .
References
External links Bibliography of Meacham's major publications, most available to download