Ruth Van Dyke
(Ph.D., University of Arizona, 1998)
Assistant Professor of Anthropology: 2001-
First year at Colorado College: 2001
Office: Barnes 312
Phone Extension: 6362
E-mail: rvandyke@coloradocollege.edu
Archeology, landscape, architecture, social power, method and theory; American Southwest.

Ruth Van Dyke is an archaeologist specializing in the study of the prehistoric American Southwest, specifically Chaco Canyon and the surrounding region. Her work investigates the roles of architecture, landscape, memory, identity, and ideology in the development of sociopolitical complexity. Since 2000, Ruth has been working on a book that uses architecture and landscape in a phenomenological approach towards understanding Chacoan ideology. Lived Landscapes, Chacoan Society will be published by the School of American Research Press in 2006. One facet of Chacoan ideology involves cyclically revisiting past rituals and events -- Ruth's work on social memory at Chaco led to a co-edited volume, Archaeologies of Memory (Blackwell, 2003). Since 2002, with her Field Archaeology class, Ruth has been investigating the pre- and post-Chacoan landscapes of the northern San Juan drainage, where Ancestral Puebloan groups gathered both before and after Chaco. Ruth seeks to understand the rise of ideas that made Chaco possible, and the ways these ideas continued into later Pueblo culture.

Visit Ruth's personal website here
Visit the Field Archaeology website here

Courses:

AN103: Introduction to Archaeology
AN204: Prehistory: The American Southwest
AN209: Topics: Visual Media in Archaeology
AN311: Theory in Archaeology
AN320: Field Archaeology
AN324: Archaeologies of Landscape