While my main geographic research area is Europe, I have participated in research from Asia, Africa, and the Pacific as well as North America. Most of this research centers on the Iron Age, but projects have touched upon all the major periods of prehistory back to the australopithecines. The main topics have been societal archaeology, especially socio-cultural groups, forms, and political aspects such as the chiefdom, and preindustrial technology. Archaeological data is sometimes approached through image analysis.
A major concern in teaching and research are the basic theoretical and methodological concepts of anthropological archaeology, including the epistemology of archaeology as a source of knowledge. Topics emphasized more in teaching than research are the substantive fields of European ethnology, ethnohistory, and folklore and topics such as lithic technology, materials analysis (including thermoluminescence), experimental archaeology, and elementary museology. I serve as the main liaison with the Physics Department for archaeoastronomy.
Ralph M. Rowlett