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headshot of Ruth M. Van Dyke

Ruth M. Van Dyke

Professor

Anthropology

Background

Ruth Van Dyke is an archaeologist specializing in the North American Southwest, specifically Chaco Canyon and the Four Corners region. Her research interests include landscape, architecture, power, memory, phenomenology and visual representation. She is currently working on social, visual and political relationships among Chacoan outlier communities in northwest New Mexico. Her new historical archaeology project investigates Alsatian immigration to 19th century Texas.

Education

  • PhD, MA, University of Arizona

Research Interests

  • Southwest United States
  • Landscape, place, and space
  • Social theory
  • Phenomenology, materiality, and representation
  • Historical archaeology
  • Archaeology of pilgrimage

More Info

Publications:

Van Dyke, Ruth M. (2019). Archaeology and Social Memory. Annual Review of Anthropology 48:207-225.

Van Dyke, Ruth M. (2019). Chaco Gathers: Experience and Assemblage in the Ancient Southwest. In New Materialisms, Ancient Urbanisms, edited by Susan M. Alt and Timothy R. Pauketat, pp. 40-64. Routledge, New York and London.

Van Dyke, Ruth M. (2018). From Enchantment to Agencement: Archaeological Engagements with Pilgrimage. Journal of Social Archaeology 18(3):348-359. DOI: 10.1177/1469605318773846

Van Dyke, Ruth M. (2017). Durable Stones, Mutable Pasts: Bundled Memory in the Alsatian Community of Castroville, Texas. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 24(1):10-27.

Van Dyke, Ruth M., R. Kyle Bocinsky, Thomas C. Windes and Tucker J. Robinson (2016). Great Houses, Shrines, and High Places: A GIS Viewshed Analysis of the Chacoan World. American Antiquity 81(2):205-230.

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