Congratulations to Professor Elizabeth Davis, winner of the William A. Douglass Book Prize in Europeanist Anthropology. This prize is awarded by the Society for the Anthropology of Europe to honor the best book published annually in Europeanist anthropology. 

Elizabeth Davis’s Artifactual: Forensic and Documentary Knowing (Duke University Press) is a bold and sensitive experiment in rendering a difficult subject, missing persons in the context of ethnonationalist violence in Cyprus, a divided society in the heart of today’s Europe. Davis offers an ethnographic account and analysis of a very contemporary problem: the enigmatic, elusive and conflictual production of knowledge. 

She examines the “artifactual” production of historicity by following forensic teams charged with recovering unidentified victims on the one hand, and by studying the use of documentary footage and photographs related to the violent events on the other. Among other things, the book deeply dialogues with recent literature on memory and archives, divided societies, suspicion and state violence. The selection committee also appreciated how beautifully written the volume is, including the parallel text created by an extensive collection of images. Davis’s innovative book is sure to have an impact within and beyond Europeanist anthropology.