About the Center

UC Santa Cruz has become a vibrant hub for archaeological research and teaching. In the ten years since the Archaeological Research Center (ARC) was founded in 2014, our community has grown into one of the most dynamic interdisciplinary centers of archaeology in North America. Today, faculty and students across all five academic divisions—Social Sciences, Humanities, Arts, Physical and Biological Sciences, and Engineering—are advancing new approaches to studying the human past and engaging with heritage in ways that connect research, education, and public life.

At UC Santa Cruz, archaeology bridges disciplines and perspectives. We are sequencing ancient genomes to illuminate population histories, utilizing 3D modeling and artificial intelligence to analyze artifacts, reconstructing settlement landscapes with LiDAR and satellite imagery, and developing new insights into craft, trade, and cultural traditions through excavation and laboratory analysis. These efforts are complemented by our commitment to collaboration with descendant and local communities, ensuring that our work respects and sustains the living legacies of the past.

The ARC has played a central role in this growth. Over the past decade, it has supported undergraduate and graduate training, fostered faculty collaboration, and created opportunities for global partnerships—from West Africa to Latin America, from the US Northwest Pacific to California’s Central Coast. At the same time, we have deepened our engagement with the public, developing exhibitions, community archaeology programs, and digital resources that bring the past into the present.

As we look ahead, the ARC will continue to expand opportunities for research, training, and dialogue. Archaeology today is about more than uncovering artifacts—it is about building bridges between people, cultures, and generations, and about recognizing the shared heritage that connects us all.

I invite you to join us in this endeavor. By supporting and participating in the ARC, you become part of a community dedicated to reimagining the human past and shaping a more inclusive future. I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events and to the discoveries we will make together.

Lars Fehren-Schmitz
Director, Archaeological Research Center, Professor of Anthropology

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