Todd Surovell

University of Wyoming

Dr. Surovell is a Professor and Department Head of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming. He is the former Director of the George C. Frison Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology. He received a B.A. in Anthropology and Zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1995 and an M.A. (1998) and Ph.D. (2003) from the University of Arizona. Although most of his fieldwork has been in Wyoming and Colorado, he has worked throughout the American West and in Israel and Denmark. From 2012 to 2017, he completed a five-year ethnoarchaeological project with Dukha reindeer herders in northern Mongolia. Over a ten-year period, he excavated Barger Gulch, Locality B, a Folsom site in Middle Park, Colorado, and is currently focusing his efforts on the La Prele Mammoth site, a Clovis kill and campsite in Converse County, Wyoming. He has published more than 60 articles on Paleoindian archaeology, lithic technology, geoarchaeology, Pleistocene extinctions, ethnoarchaeology, and other topics. He is the author of a book on the economics of stone tool use titled Toward a Behavioral Ecology of Lithic Technology. Originally from northern Virginia, he feels at home in the high plains and mountains of Wyoming, where he has now lived for 17 years and a few years ago finally felt it was okay to buy a pair of cowboy boots.