About the Center

UC Santa Cruz is an exciting place for Archaeology! In the past few years, the community of scholars engaged in archaeological research at UC Santa Cruz has grown dramatically, not just in anthropology, the traditional home of archaeology programs in many North American institutions, but across all five academic divisions.

Faculty across the Social Sciences, Humanities, Arts, Physical and Biological Sciences, and Engineering engage in a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches to generate new perspectives on the human past. From 3D modeling and ancient DNA analysis, to settlement patterns and the study of animal remains, faculty on our campus are pushing the boundaries of archaeological research and community engagement.

The Archaeological Research Center was established in 2014 to brings these approaches together, to encourage new and innovative ways of exploring our collective past. Since then, the ARC has fostered a creative archaeological inquiry on campus and beyond, promoted undergraduate and graduate research in archaeology, and made important connections with the broader community. Please join us in this exciting venture, and I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events.

J. Cameron Monroe
Director
UCSC Archaeological Research Center

Culture & History

Scholars across the disciplines study material culture to understand past human lives. Archaeologists differ in juxtaposing evidence from artifacts, biological remains, settlement patterns, and many other sources to construct narratives about how cultures and societies came into being. This engagement begins with fieldwork, and includes a host of analytic techniques to produce the data upon which narratives of human history rest.

Archaeologists at UC Santa Cruz focus on past people’s interactions with one another at the local, regional, and global levels, illuminating the ways in which cultural histories unfolded around the world in relation to a wide range of historical, environmental, and cultural forces.

Archaeological Sciences

Archaeology and the physical and biological sciences share many research goals and methods, yielding collaborative contributions to our understanding of the human past.

Advances in stable isotope analysis, genomic sequencing, and many other fields, have fundamentally transformed our ability to ask fine-grained questions about how people lived in the past.

UC Santa Cruz faculty members are at the forefront of scientific analysis in archaeology, and have modeled effective collaborative research and training across the disciplines.

Digital Archaeology

Advances in Global Positioning Systems, Geographic Information Systems, and three-dimensional modeling are providing new answers to old questions, and in fact changing the nature of the questions themselves.

ARC faculty and staff are actively engaged in the utilization of digital technologies that are directly or indirectly applied to archaeological data.

The ARC is thus poised to take a lead in the growing field of Digital Archaeology, building bridges across campus divisions, and with institutions in the Silicon Valley.

Cultural Heritage Stewardship

The ARC serves as a space for the productive and necessary dialogue between archaeologists, descendant communities, government agencies, and those in the broader public interested in archaeological research.

ARC faculty members place a high premium on public outreach and education to communicate the importance of archaeological heritage to the broader public.

Similarly, the ARC is strongly committed to collaborating with stakeholder communities, not only as a matter of ethics and law, but also because we believe it results in a more comprehensive and community-relevant archaeological practice.

Email

arc@ucsc.edu

Mailing Address

MAILING ADDRESS
U.C. Santa Cruz
Anthropology Department
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95064

CAMPUS MAIL STOP
Anthropology Social Sciences 1 Faculty Services