News & Events

Graduate student Nicholas Puente (Archaeology, PhD Candidate) awarded a Beverly Sears Graduate Student Research Grant. This funding will support his dissertation project which explores how ancient Maya peoples engaged with subterranean caves during a period of frequent droughts. Caves are doorways to the underworld realm of ancestors and deities who...

Kelsey Hoppes (Archaeology, PhD Candidate) was awarded the Donna C. Roper Research Fund to support her dissertation research on the coalescing of past diverse groups in northeastern Nebraska at 25BD1. This fund will support her in sending over 350 pottery samples for neutron activation analysis in helping to identify different...

Our Graduate Student Symposium was an absolute triumph! From thought-provoking discussions to groundbreaking research presentations, our symposium showcased the brilliant minds shaping the future of anthropology. A massive thank you to everyone who contributed to making this event a resounding success – from our dedicated organizers to our esteemed presenters...

Professor Chris Hammons has received not one, but two awards for his work: (1) a Kayden Research Award for American Refuge , a documentary feature about trauma and time in the upland forests of the American West. The award covers the costs to finish film, which will premiere this year...

Professor Will Taylor and Lakota elders receive the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize for their research article, "Early Dispersal of Domestic Horses into the Great Plains and Northern Rockies." The prize is awarded to the author or authors of an outstanding paper published in the Research Articles or Reports sections of...

Professor Warren Thompson publishes, “Being Seen is Believing: Evidence and Authority in the Ache Mission Encounter," in the Journal of Anthropological Research. Abstract Like many other lowland South American groups described in the literature, Ache give a higher epistemic value to visually experiencing events, a sensibility that some have argued...

Professor Fernando Villanea gave an online HOT (Human Origins Today) Topic - talk, "Archaic Introgression in Modern Humans: What It Can Tell Us About Archaic Humans and About Ourselves," for the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Every person alive today inherited some portion of their genomes from Neanderthals, Denisovans, and...

Professor Jerry Jacka's chapter, “"Don't Look Down": Green Technologies, Climate Change, and Mining,” published in Anthropology and Climate Change from Transformations to Worldmaking, Routledge. Description: In this third edition of Anthropology and Climate Change , Susan Crate and Mark Nuttall offer a collection of chapters that examine how anthropologists work...

Paige Edmiston (Cultural Anthropology, PhD Candidate) receives the Carol B. Lynch Memorial Fellowship for fall 2025. The Carol B. Lynch Memorial Fellowship Fund was established to honor Dr. Lynch for her tireless dedication to graduate education and research at the national level and at the University of Colorado at Boulder...

Professor Steve Leigh was awarded the Gabriel W. Lasker service award for his service as AABA president during COVID. Dr. Leigh's nomination emphasized "his unwavering generosity, and the incredible level of graciousness he brought to his leadership roles." He was serving as VP and Program Chair when the COVID pandemic...