Mary Lou Larson

Education

1976 - University of Wyoming BA in Anthropologu
1982 - U. of California Santa Barbara MA in Anthropology
1990 - U. of California Santa Barbara PhD in Anthropology

Teaching and Research Interests

Her research focuses on the organization of technology, chipped stone analysis, geographic information science, site structure, hunter-gatherer adaptations, and archaeological theory and method and how all of this pertains to the archaeology of the Plains and Rocky Mountains. She teaches Anthropology courses on GIS in Anthropology, Old World Archaeology, Professionalism in Anthropology.  She has received, in conjunction with other members of the Anthropology Department, grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Geographic Society, and Wenner-Gren to reanalyze archaeological materials from the Hell Gap site perhaps the best known Paleoindian sites in North America. She is also involved in further excavations at the Hell Gap site where she and Marcel Kornfeld teach the Advanced Archaeological Field School on a biennial basis. The field school operates on odd years (2001, 2003, etc.). She is currently the UW faculty representative and membership chair for the University Consortium on Geographic Information Science.  Mary Lou's GIScience research involves investigating the nature of surface archaeology and hunter-gatherer landscape use.  She received an NSF grant to continue GIS research on the Surface Archaeology of Southwest Wyoming and plans to continue research in that area during 2004.  Additionally, she is beginning research on the creation of a 3D image of the paleo land surfaces of the Hell Gap site using remote sensing techniques.

Her work centers on the realization that only by understanding where peoples of the world came from and how they got where they are today can we hope to understand the issues that are imperative to our survival today.

Link to Anth 4160/5160

Email:  Mlarson@uwyo.edu

Revised 02/17/2005