Keith Kintigh
Professor
Associate Director, School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Ph.D., Archaeology, University of Michigan
SHESC Themes: Societies and their Natural Environments; Culture, Heritage and Identity
Field Specializations: Archaeology, Archaeological Informatics, Quantitative Methods, Settlement Patterns and Spatial Analysis, Political and Social Organization
Regional Focus: North America (Southwest)
Contact: Keith Kintigh, SHESC 268
Research:
Keith Kintigh's career-long commitment to understanding political organization in middle-range societies has focused on the Cíbola area along the Arizona-New Mexico border near Zuni Pueblo. This constitutes most of the independent field work he has undertaken (with graduate students) in his 21 years at ASU and continues to be a major focus of his independent research effort. In addition to extensive excavation, Kintigh and his team have surveyed on the order of 100km² and recorded more than 900 archaeological sites in the area. In years past, he also engaged in extended fieldwork in Morocco and Peru.
Kintigh's other major research focus has been on the development and application of quantitative methods in archaeology. Recent efforts are largely devoted to the topics of diversity and spatial analysis. Through this work he was invited to be a member, secretary and vice president of Commission 4 (Data Management and Mathematical Methods in Archaeology) of the Union Internationale des Sciences Préhistoriques et Protohistoriques.
Over the last few years, Kintigh has devoted increasing amounts of time to three collaborative research teams. Kintigh is leading an effort toward the development of a digital information infrastructure for archaeology that would not only preserve and make more accessible archival data sets, but—through an ability to integrate data across projects—has the potential to transform the scholarly landscape for synthetic and comparative research.
A second group is using resilience theory to understand stability and change in coupled socioecological systems through a synthesis of data from several prehistoric cases in the Southwest U.S. Zuni is a key case study in this effort, and the collaborative project will contribute importantly to progress on his Cíbola research.
A third effort is a joint archaeology and ecology field project on Perry Mesa, in Agua Fria National Monument just north of Phoenix. Its goal is to understand the social and ecological circumstances under which semi-arid ecosystem structure and function are permanently transformed in the course of relatively short-term, low-intensity human occupation.
Research Projects:
Archaeological Data Integration for the Study of Long-Term Human and Social Dynamics
El Morro Valley Prehistory Project
Legacies on the Landscape
Long-Term Coupled Socioecological Change in the American Southwest and Northern Mexico
Protohistoric Zuni Social and Political Organization
Roosevelt Platform Mound Study (RPMS)
Teaching:
Kintigh's greatest investment of time in teaching is in one-on-one contact with graduate students though he enthusiastically teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. He has enjoyed and benefited from working closely both with graduate students who are working on topics near to his research interests and those much more distant. It has been rewarding to see those students who have worked with him enjoy notable success. Kintigh was recently honored to receive the university's Outstanding Doctoral Mentor award. His undergraduate classroom teaching has been dedicated to introductory courses in New World and Southwest archaeology. At the graduate level he has taught a range of courses, most recently concentrated on quantitative topics.
Professional Service:
Kintigh has served on the Board of Directors, as secretary and, most recently, as president of the Society for American Archaeology, the nation's leading professional organization of Americanist archaeologists. On behalf of the society he helped negotiate the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 and has frequently represented scientific perspectives on the repatriation of Native American human remains, including testimony before both US Senate and House committees. He has also served on review panels for the National Science Foundation and the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
Select Publications:
Kintigh, K. W. (in press). Repatriation as a force of change in Southwestern archaeology. In T. Killion (Ed.), Politics, practice and theory: Repatriation as a force of change in contemporary anthropology. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Kintigh, K. W. (2007). Late prehistoric and protohistoric settlement systems in the Zuni area. In D. A. Gregory and D. R. Wilcox (Eds.), Zuni origins: Anthropological approaches on multiple Americanist and Southwestern scales. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Kintigh, K. W. (2007). Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. In D. Pearsall (Ed.), Encyclopedia of archaeology (pp. 1657-1659). Oxford: Elsevier Inc.
Kintigh, K. W. (2006). The promise and challenge of archaeological data integration. American Antiquity, 71(3), 567-578.
Kintigh, K. W., Glowacki, D. M. & Huntley, D. L. (2004). Long-term settlement history and the emergence of towns in the Zuni area. American Antiquity, 69(3): 432-456.
Lovis, W. A., Kintigh, K. W., Steponaitis, V. P. & Goldstein, L. G. (2004). Archaeological perspectives on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act: Underlying principles. In J. R. Richman & M. P. Forsyth (Eds.), Legal Perspectives on Cultural Resources (pp. 165-184). Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.