| | Susan McIntosh has been with Anthropology Department at Rice University since 1984. She studies topics on the origins of complex societies, West African Iron Age archaeology, ceramic analysis, human osteology, and cultural property and heritage preservation issues. She is the co-author or editor of five books, including The Way the Wind Blows: Climate, History and Human Action (Columbia University Press, 2000), and Beyond Chiefdoms: Pathways to Complexity in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1999). Currently, she is working on two major writing projects: an overview of West African archaeology for the Cambridge University Press World Archaeology series, and the final draft of the monograph of their excavations in the Middle Senegal Valley, with her research partner RJ McIntosh. She is also writing for a co-authored volume on ancient empires of West Africa. In addition, she has authored or co-authored over 50 articles on West African archaeological fieldwork or issues relating to complex societies in Africa. She has served or is currently serving on the editorial boards of numerous journals. Prof. McIntosh’s current research focuses on the emergence of large-scale, complex societies in Africa, the impact of climate and environmental change on human society in the past, and the politics of archaeology and archaeological representations of the past. She is now working with two graduate students and one undergraduate student. She also collaborates with colleagues in Yale University, Syracuse University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Mali, University of Dakar, and College of William and Mary. Her main fieldwork has concentrated on the development of iron-using societies in the two floodplains of the Middle Niger and the Middle Senegal Valleys. Her field research in Mali and Senegal since 1980 is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, and private foundations. McIntosh is actively involved in archaeological heritage preservation. She has lectured widely on the topics of archaeological heritage and cultural property over the past decade. From 1996-2003 she was a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Cultural Property. For 2006-2007, she holds the Nancy Wilkie Lectureship in Archaeological Heritage at the Archaeological Institute of America and will travel to several chapters to lecture on “Africa’s Vanishing Past”. The Gorée Field School is seeking students for Summer 2007 right now. To learn more about Rice University Archaeological Field School on Gorée Island, go to Rice Archaeology or Gorée Archaeology websites. | |
