Fellow of INSTAAR; Professor of Anthropology; Curator of Museum and Field Studies, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder.

PhD: 1979, Brown University.

jdixon@colorado.edu
(303) 735-7802

INSTAAR Directorate Members

Specialty: Archeology.

Research Interests: High Latitude/High Altitude Human Adaptations, Circumpolar and Paleoindian Archeology, Quaternary Science and Geoarcheology.

Biographical Sketch: E. James Dixon was Professor of Anthropology, Curator of Archeology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks between 1973 and 1993. He received his B.A. and M.A from the University of Alaska in 1970 and 1972 respectively and his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1979. He was a Marshall Fellow for research at the National Museum of Denmark in 1972 and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in 1996-97. He has been active in archeological and paleoecological research since 1967, and has administered more than four million dollars in research grants and contracts including grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. He was a cofounder of the Alaska Quaternary Center and served as Director between 1992 - 93. He has extensive experience in North American archeology, particularly focusing on the human colonization and early cultural development of the Americas. His research results are reported in many professional papers and published abstracts, several major research reports and more than 40 professional publications. His first book, Quest for the Origins of the First Americans (1993), synthesizes the early prehistory of northwestern North America . His second book Bones, Boats and Bison: Archeology and the First Colonization of Western North America (1999) provides an overview of the early archeology of western North America. He has been an invited lecturer in the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan. He served as curator of Archeology for the Denver Museum of Natural History between 1994 and 2000. He is now a Fellow at the University of Colorado's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and active in archeological field research in Colorado and Alaska.

Outstanding Awards: Marshall Fellow 1972, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow 1996-97.

Selected Publications: