E. Christian Wells, Ph.D.
Director,
Office of Sustainability
Associate
Professor, Department of Anthropology
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.