The archaeology subdiscipline provides continuous geographic coverage of ancient societies from the Plains of North America through the Southwest and Mesoamerica to the Intermediate Area. The native societies we focus on range from egalitarian hunter-gatherers through middle-range societies to the city-states and empires of Mesoamerica. The faculty’s theoretical and topical interests include human ecology, ethnoarchaeology, agency, and social theory, lithic and ceramic analyses, remote sensing, disasters in ancient and modern times, and geophysical applications in archeology

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The biological anthropology faculty at CU have interests and research strengths that cross subdisciplinary boundaries and foster collaboration with faculty and graduate students in other disciplines and sub-disciplines. We share an interest in human ecology, the broad integrative area of anthropology that focuses on the interactions of culture, biology, and the environment. We also share an interest in the processes of globalization, which are rapidly changing many aspects of the modern world. As biological anthropologists, we are well-positioned to analyze the impact of globalization on the interaction between biology and behavior, and to analyze human and primate adaptations to changing environments and declining biodiversity.

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Among the topical interests of the cultural anthropology faculty are gender and sexuality, culture and power, modernity and consumption, kinship and relatedness, tourism and popular culture, medical anthropology, science and technology studies, human and political ecology, pastoralism, conservation and sustainability, museums, semiotics, concepts of “care,” nationalism and ethnic identity, racial constructs, post-colonialism, refugees and citizenship, and history and memory. Areas of regional expertise in the department include Latin America and the Caribbean, Native America, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, East Africa, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and Papua New Guinea, as well as their respective diasporas around the world.

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