The Research Institute at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center is dedicated to the belief that archaeology can address many of the challenges facing society in the twenty-first century. We are an interdisciplinary network of scholars—archaeologists, economists, geographers, sociologists, educators, and indigenous culture specialists, among others—whose collaborative approach to research is especially suited to addressing big questions with large and complex datasets.
Institute research will expand Crow Canyon’s capacity in all three of its mission areas: long-term archaeological research, education about humans past and present, and research partnerships with Native Americans. As part of Crow Canyon, researchers at the Institute can leverage more than three decades of archaeological inquiry—and an extensive database—in support of sustained research leading to a better understanding of the human past and a clearer vision of society’s path forward.
The ultimate goal of the Institute is to offer research-based solutions to real problems. It’s ambitious, but the potential exists for archaeology—long regarded as simply the study of antiquity—to provide fresh perspectives on some of the most intransigent, and controversial, issues of our time.
Researchers at Crow Canyon are leaders in quantitative archaeology, computational and statistical modeling, and environmental reconstruction.