Associate Professor, Anthropology; Associate Curator, Museum of Anthropological Archaeology
rabeck@umich.edu
Office Information:
4017 Ruthven Museums Bldg, 1109 Geddes Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1079
phone: 734.764.1240
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies;
LACS Faculty
Education/Degree:
Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2004
About
Rob Beck is an anthropological archaeologist interested in the development of complex societies in the Americas and in the social transformations that followed European contact. For his dissertation work, he excavated a Middle Formative (800-400 BC) ritual platform at the site of Alto Pukara, located in Bolivia's Lake Titicaca Basin at an altitude of 3800 m. His research at Alto Pukara used Lévi-Strauss' concept of the social house to understand changes in public space during the Formative Period. Since 2001, concurrent with his Andean work, Rob has co-directed the Exploring Joara Project, which focuses on the archaeology and early colonial history of Native American societies in the North Carolina Piedmont. Rob and his colleagues have directed NSF-supported research along the Catawba River at the Berry site, location of the native town of Joara and the Spanish garrison Fort San Juan, built by the Juan Pardo expedition in 1567. Manned by thirty soldiers for eighteen months, this fort is the earliest European settlement in the interior of what is now the United States. Its excavation is shedding new light on the process and practice of colonialism in the early American South.
