Richard Wilshusen
(Ph.D., CU Boulder, 1991)
Visting Assistant Professor of Anthropology 2007-2008
Office: Barnes 314
Phone Extension: 6361
E-mail: Richard.Wilshusen@ColoradoCollege.edu
Archaeology, migration, landscape and identity, rapid social change; American Southwest.

Rich Wilshusen has worked as an archaeologist in the American Southwest for over 20 years. He is known for his work on population change and settlement shifts in the early Pueblo period, with an emphasis on the processes leading to the first pueblo villages in the northern Southwest. He is the co-editor (with Mark Varien) of Seeking the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in the Mesa Verde Region (2002). In addition to a variety of publications in academic journals and books, he has published popular accounts of his work in books such as The Mesa Verde World (edited by David Grant Noble, 2006). In the last several years he has turned his interests to the dramatic changes in Pueblo and Navajo communities with the entry of the Spanish into the Southwest, as well as the rapid expansion of Pueblo populations between AD 600 and 900. Prior to his work in the American Southwest he had the good fortune to do archaeological work in Texas and Central America and to participate in biological research for half a year in a village in the Amazonian rainforest.

Courses:

AN103: Introduction to Archaeology
AN204: Prehistory: The American Southwest
AN209: Topics: Civilizational Collapse
AN320: Field Archaeology