Keith Kintigh

Senior Sustainability Scientist, Global Institute of Sustainability
Associate Director and Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Arizona State University
PO Box 872402
Tempe, AZ 85287

Phone: 480-965-6909
Email: KINTIGH@ASU.edu
Home Page: http://www.public.asu.edu/~kintigh/

Biography

Dr. Kintigh's research has been devoted to understanding political organization in middle-range societies in the Cibola area along the Arizona-New Mexico border near Zuni Pueblo, and to developing and applying quantitative methods in archaeology. Recently, he has devoted increasing amounts of time to three collaborative projects: 1) leading a national effort of archaeologists and computer scientists to develop a digital information infrastructure for archaeology that will not only preserve and make more accessible archival data sets, but — through an ability to integrate data across projects — have the potential to transform the scholarly landscape of archaeology with respect to synthetic and comparative research; 2) a project using resilience theory to understand stability and change in coupled socioecological systems through a synthesis of data from several prehistoric cases in the Southwest U.S.; and 3) a joint archaeology and ecology field project on Perry Mesa just north of Phoenix, the goal of which is to understand the social and ecological circumstances under which semi-arid ecosystem structure and function are permanently transformed in the course of relatively short-term, low-intensity human occupation. Dr. Kintigh teaches courses on the use of quantitative methods in archaeology and southwestern archaeology.

Selected Publications

Kintigh, K. W. 2006. The Promise and Challenge of Archaeological Data Integration. American Antiquity.

Briggs, J. M, K. A. Spielmann, H. Schaafsma, K W. Kintigh, K. Morehouse, M. Kruse and K. Schollmeyer, 2006. Why ecology needs archaeologists and archaeology needs ecologists. Frontiers in Ecology.

Kintigh, K. W. 2006. Documentation for copyrighted package of computer programs for archaeological data analysis. Tools for Quantitative Archaeology.

Hunt, R. C., D. Guillet, D. R. Abbott, J. Bayman, P. Fish, S. Fish, K. W. Kintigh, and J. A. Neely. 2005. Plausible Ethnographic Analogies for the Social Organization of Hohokam Canal Irrigation. American Antiquity.

Kintigh, K. W., and B. Lepper. 2004. A Delicate Balance: The Society for American Archaeology and the Development of National Repatriation Policy. New Directions in First Americans Studies.

Expertise

informatics; information integration; archaeology; socioecology; data analysis; data cleaning and information extraction; agrarian societies; algorithm development; ceramic technology; landscape studies;

Courses

ASB 568: Intrasite Analysis in Archaeology
ASM 566: Simulation, Modeling, and Monte Carlo Methods in Archaeology
ASB 223: Buried Civilizations of the Americas
ASB 336: Prehistory of the Southwest
ASM 565: Quantitative and Formal Methods in Archaeology

Education

Ph.D., Anthropology, University of Michigan, 1982
M.S., Computer Science, Stanford University, 1974
A.B., Sociology (with Honors), Stanford University, 1974

Journal Articles

Briggs, J. M., K. A. Spielmann, H. Schaafsma, K. W. Kintigh, M. Kruse, K. Morehouse and K. Schollmeyer. 2006. Why ecology needs archaeologists and archaeology needs ecologists. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 4:180-188. (link)

Nelson, M. C., K. Kintigh, D. R. Abbott and J. M. Anderies. 2010. The cross-scale interplay between social and biophysical context and the vulnerability of irrigation-dependent societies: Archaeology's long-term perspective. Ecology and Society 15:Art. 31. (link)

Posters/Presentations

Kruse, M., H. Schaafsma, K. Schollmeyer, J. Briggs, K. Horn, K. Kintigh, C. Lai and K. Spielmann. 2006. Legacies on the landscape: Integrating ecology and archaeology on the Agua Fria National Monument, Arizona. Poster presented February at the 7th Annual Meeting of the Graduates in Life, Earth and Social Sciences Research Symposium, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ.

Kruse, M., H. Schaafsma, K. Schollmeyer, J. Briggs, K. Horn, K. Kintigh, C. Lai, K. Spielmann and C. Wichlacz. 2006. Legacies on the landscape: Integrating ecology and archaeology on the Agua Fria National Monument, Arizona. Poster presented at the 19 January 2006 CAP LTER 8th Annual Poster Symposium, Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. (link)

Schollmeyer, K., J. Briggs, K. Horn, K. Kintigh, M. Kruse, C. Lai, H. Schaafsma, K. Spielmann and C. Wichlacz. 2005. Legacies on the landscape: Integrating ecology and archaeology on the Agua Fria National Monument, Arizona. Poster presented March 31-April 3 at the 70th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Salt Lake City, UT.