E. Christian Wells, Ph.D.
Associate
Professor & Graduate Director
I am a Mesoamerican archaeologist with
research interests centering on ritual, economy, and the environment in
small-scale societies. My current research focuses on the long-term
environmental consequences of how prehispanic peoples living in southeastern
Mesoamerica perceived and interacted with soil, land, and earth.
At USF, I direct the Cultural Soilscapes Research Group,
a cross-disciplinary faculty-student collaborative whose primary goal is to
study human/soil dynamics from an anthropological perspective using techniques
developed in both the social and natural sciences, including archaeology,
ethnography, ethnohistory, geography, geology, and chemistry. With funding from
the National Geographic Society, our recent research concerns the changing
relationship between land use and soil management in Honduran farming
communities over the past two millennia. The aim of this work is to discover
and apply new information about ancient soil systems to help address natural
resource challenges of the present and future.
My research into soil and culture is wide
ranging—from ancient agriculture to modern forensics—but is integrated by the
core concepts of applied archaeology, economic anthropology, ritual economy,
and cultural soilscapes. I teach a
number of classes that follow these interests, including a graduate seminar in Economic Anthropology, an
undergraduate seminar in Soil and Culture, and courses in Archaeology, Mesoamerican Archaeology, Quantitative Methods, and Advanced Quantitative
Methods. I also direct an archaeology field school
for graduate and undergraduate students each summer in Honduras.