Mary Lou Larson

Professor & Chair

Archaeology

BA 1976, University of Wyoming, Anthropology

MA 1982, U. of California Santa Barbara, Anthropology

Ph.D 1990, U. of California Santa Barbara, Anthropology

mlarson@uwyo.edu • (307) 766-5566 • Anthropology Bldg 204

 
Her research includes investigation of prehistoric hunter-gatherer existence across time and space. On-going projects include GIS in the Moxa Arch and Jonah/Anticline areas of southwest Wyoming and the rock shelters of the Bighorn Basin and Mountains; excavation and analysis of the Hell Gap site, a stratified Paleoindian site located in eastern Wyoming, and laboratory analysis of materials from the Laddie Creek and Bugas-Holding sites. She has received grants from the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Geographic Society, Wenner-Gren, the Bureau of Land Management, NASA Space Grant Consortium. She is currently the UW faculty representative for the University Consortium on Geographic Information Science.

Courses Taught:

ANTH 1450           World Archaeology

ANTH 2210           North American Indians

ANTH 4150/5150   Sem. in Prehistory: Indo-European Expansion

ANTH 4160/5160   GIS in Anthropology

ANTH 5860           Advanced Arch. Field Studies: Paleoindian

ANTH 5880           Professionalism in Anthropology

Recent/Selected Publications:

Larson, Mary Lou, Marcel Kornfeld, and George C. Frison (editors). 2009 Hell Gap: A Paleoindian Campsite at the Edge of the Rockies. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake.

Kornfeld, Marcel, and Mary Lou Larson 2008 Bonebeds and other Myths: Paleoindian to Archaic Transition on North American Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. Quaternary International 191: 18-33.

Kornfeld, Marcel, Mary Lou Larson, Adam Wiewel, Craig Arnold, Mike Toft, and Dennis J. Stanford. 2007 The Nelson Site: A Cody Aged Bison Bone Bed in Eastern Colorado. Plains Anthropologist 52 (203):257-278.

Larson, Mary Lou 2007 A GIS Perspective on Rock Shelter Landscapes in Wyoming. In On shelter's Ledge: Histories, Theories and Methods of Rock Shelter Research, edited by Marcel Kornfeld, Sergey Vasile'ev, and Laura Miotti. BAR International Series 2007, pp 163-172, Oxford.

Hall, Christopher T. and Mary Lou Larson (editors). 2004 Aggregate Analysis in Chipped Stone Studies. University of Utah Press.

Research Interests:

Spatial distribution and variation of surface archaeology across the landscape using geographic information systems; Chipped stone technological organization, particularly debitage and minimum analytical nodules; Understanding Rocky Mountain and Plains prehistory through analysis of intensively excavated stratified archaeological sites; The investigation of early to mid-Holocene house pit structures throughout the west; Paleoindian to Archaic transition in the Rockies and the Plains.