Our faculty members conduct archaeological research around the globe and strongly uphold the value of world archaeology, which exposes students to a diversity of geographic regions, research problems, and fieldwork styles.
Within this world-spanning research, there are regions in which our faculty are most engaged:
Professor Jessica Thompson directs the Malawi Ancient Lifeways and Peoples Project, which aims to understand how hunter-gatherer social interactions changed in response to environmental shifts at the end of the Pleistocene and later during the Holocene.
Professor Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos directs the Cotzumalhuapa Archaeological Project at an ancient Maya city in Guatemala. Working in the Andes, Professor Richard Burger specializes in the emergence of complex societies and has conducted research in Peru since 1975.
In Classics, Professor Milette Gaifman is a scholar of ancient Greek art and archaeology, and Professor Andrew Johnston is an ancient historian whose research interests lie Roman culture. Dr. Andrew Koh of the Peabody Museum directs the Yale Ancient Pharmacology Program.
The Egyptology program in the Department of Near Eastern Cultures & Languages includes council members Professor John C. Darnell, Professor Nadine Moeller, and Dr. Gregory Marouard, all of whom direct archaeological excavations in Egypt and its neighboring regions.
Several council members focus on the Near East and the surrounding regions: Dr. Ellery Frahm (Anthropology), Dr. Agnete Lassen (Yale Babylonian Collection), and Professors Harvey Weiss and Eckart Frahm (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations).
Professor William Honeychurch studies nomadic political organization on the Eurasian steppe, primarily Mongolia. How small groups of pastoral nomads assembled complex polities reveals different approaches to political relationships, state organization, and inter-cultural contact.
Professor Anne P. Underhill specializes in the archaeology of East Asia, primarily China. Her focus has been understanding changes in regional settlement and economic organization during the late prehistoric and early Bronze Age periods in the Rizhao area of southeastern Shandong.