Gary M. Feinman

Gary Feinman, MacArthur Curator of Mesoamerican Anthropology at Chicago's Field Museum, co-directs two international archaeological field projects. His principal research area is Mesoamerica, where he currently leads excavations at Lambityeco. This is the fourth Classic period (AD 200-850) settlement where he has led residential excavations (following Ejutla, El Palmillo, and the Mitla Fortress). At the most overarching level, this research investigates the Classic period economy in the Valley of Oaxaca, the functioning and eventual collapse of the early city centered at Monte Albán, and the reorganization of the region in the subsequent Postclassic period.

For the last 18 years, Feinman also has co-led a systematic settlement pattern survey of a coastal basin in eastern Shandong, China. This study focuses on the rise of hierarchical polities in the region, the eventual incorporation of this area into empires centered to the west, and the documentation of settlement and demographic change in this basin over millennia.

Feinman's field studies have underpinned comparative analyses of (and publications on) leadership, cooperation, inequality, pre-industrial economics, and the complex relations between humans and their environments over time. He is an AAAS Fellow and was awarded the Presidential Recognition Award by the Society for American Archaeology.