Russell Greaves portrait
  • Adjunct Associate Professor, Anthropology Department
801-532-2340

Research Summary

My training and research interests are in the comparative archaeology and ethnoarchaeologyy of hunter-gatherers and small-scale agricultural societies. I have archaeological experience in the American west. My ethnoarchaeological research includes foragers of Venezuela, agriculturalists in Mexico, and Native Americans of the Southwest. My research is multi-disciplinary, focusing on human ecology, material culture, and behavioral variability among modern and past subsistence peoples.

Education

  • Ph.D., Anthropology, University of New Mexico. Project: Ethnoarchaeological investigation of subsistence mobility, resource targeting, and technological organization among Pumé foragers of Venezuela
  • M.A., Anthropology, University of New Mexico
  • B. A. , Archaeology, Clark University

Biography

Russell D. Greaves is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah. He has taught at Harvard University, Boston University, the University of Texas at San Antonio, Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas at Arlington, Westminster College, and the University of New Mexico. He is a Research Associate with the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University and a Consulting Scholar with the American Section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Dr. Greaves is an archaeologist with over 35 years experience, primarily in the American West. He has worked extensively in the US Great Plains and Southwest, focusing on hunter-gatherer archaeology but also has significant experience with agricultural society archaeology of the Southwest and Mississippian sites. Dr. Greaves has been involved with many innovative Paleoindian excavations, including the Folsom type-site in New Mexico. His areas of archaeological expertise include geoarchaeology, stone tool studies, past subsistence research through faunal and botanical remains, and ethnoarchaeology. He has performed long-term ethnoarchaeological and behavioral ecology research with Pumé foragers of Venezuela since 1990. He also has worked with Yucatec Maya agriculturalists in Mexico with Dr. Karen Kramer. His ethnoarchaeological work includes experience with Navajo pastoralists, and several groups of Pueblo Indian agriculturalists of Arizona and New Mexico. Dr. Greaves has additional training and interests in biological anthropology, human evolution, linguistics, ethnography, museum studies, and applied conservation anthropology. His current research includes hunting and gathering subsistence activities and technological use among the Pumé, research on land use and agricultural practices of modern Maya subsistence agriculturalists, and several geoarchaeological projects.