Dr. Anna Marie Prentiss is an archaeologist specializing in the ancient history of the Great Plains, Pacific Northwest, North Pacific Rim, and Arctic regions of North America.  She has a methodological specialty in lithic technology and theoretical interests in the archaeology of villages and towns, social inequality, hunter-gatherer mobility and technological organization, and the cultural evolutionary process. She is associate editor of the scholarly journal, Current Anthropology.

Dr. Prentiss is actively engaged in a long term study of the evolution of complex hunter-gatherer-fisher societies on the interior of British Columbia.  The current focus of this research is a multi-year excavation at the Bridge River archaeological site conducted in a partnership with Xwisten, the Bridge River Indian Band.   Bridge River is one of several exceptionally large and well preserved ancient housepit villages, located near the town of Lillooet, British Columbia.  The site was initially occupied between 1800 and 1000 years ago and then during the past 500 years.  With funding from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Prentiss, along with her students and colleagues conducted major excavations during 2008 and 2009 to examine socio-economic and political changes that occurred during the occupation span of the village.   Recent research (2012-2023) at Bridge River has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation.  Research is focused on excavation of Housepit 54, a long-lived pithouse occupied briefly during the Fur Trade period and most intensively at dates spanning approximately 1000-1500 years ago.  

Dr. Prentiss remains an active scholar in Northwestern Plains and Rocky Mountains archaeology.  In 2017 and 2018 Dr. Prentiss conducted new field research at site 48PA551 in the Sunlight Basin of northwestern Wyoming.  This research emphasized the development of winter sedentism, subsistence intensification, and changes in human sociality during the Middle Holocene (ca. 4000-4500 years ago).

Dr. Prentiss has a long standing interest in the Arctic region.  She conducted field research on the Old Togiak site in southwest Alaska in partnership with the community of Togiak during 2015.  She is now pursuing new directions in Arctic archaeology with an emphasis on identification and mitigation activities on sites most threatened by climate change factors.

Research interests: Archaeological method and theory, evolutionary theory, hunter-gatherers, lithic technology, archaeology and ethnology of the Great Plains, Northwestern North America, North Pacific Rim, and Arctic.

ANTY 454 Lithic Technology

ANTY 458 Archaeology of Hunter-Gatherers

ANTY 459 Archaeology of the Arctic and Subarctic

ANTY 500 Contemporary Anthropological Thought

ANTY 553 Seminar in Evolutionary Archaeology

ANTY 601 Proposal Preparation and Research Design