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Liz Klarich is a Latin American archaeologist who specializes in Andean prehistory with a regional focus in the Lake Titicaca Basin of Peru and Bolivia. Her theoretical interests include the origins of inequality, the development of early cities, the nature of leadership strategies, and the role of prehistory in modern identity politics. In addition to years of field experience in the Andes, she has worked on archaeological projects in northern Spain, the American Southwest, coastal California, and northern Sudan.
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Photo: Machu Picchu 2008
Professor Klarich received her BA from the University of Chicago and her MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Since completing the PhD in 2005, she has taught a variety of archaeology classes at UCSB and from 2007- 2009 served as the Assistant Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Professor Klarich’s field research focuses on the site of Pukara, an important regional center located in the southern Peruvian highlands. During the Late Formative Period (500 B.C.- A.D. 400), populations moved to Pukara and built monumental stone constructions, produced technologically sophisticated multi-colored pottery and stone carvings, and intensified agro-pastoral strategies to feed the expanding site. Since 2000, Klarich has directed mapping, excavation, and lab projects at Pukara and in 2009 she will return to the field to further explore the site’s earliest settlers. In addition to archaeological research, Professor Klarich is active in the development of the Museo Litico Pukara, the local site museum located in the adjacent town of Pucará. Research at Pukara has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, the Heinz Foundation Grant Program for Latin American Archaeology, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the University of California, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.
At Smith College, Professor Klarich will teach courses in archaeological method and theory, Latin American prehistory, and more specialized courses on the prehistory of food, early cities, and ceramic analysis, among others. She will also teach courses at Mount Holyoke College and at Amherst College.
Photo: Pukara
