Christopher S. Beekman

Dr. Christopher Beekman (PhD 1996 Vanderbilt University) is professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Denver, where he has taught since 2001. Dr. Beekman's research focuses on sociopolitical practices in ancient western Mexico, and that region's interaction with its neighbors. He as been particularly interested in multidisciplinary approaches and subverting or disrupting static models of subsistence, settlement, political activity. His research projects have research funding from the National Science Foundation, the Foundation for Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., the University of Colorado Denver, and other sources. He has directed excavation projects at Llano Grande and Navajas, and surveys in the La Primavera region and in the Magdalena Valley (with Dr. Verenice Heredia Espinoza), Jalisco, Mexico. Dr. Beekman is currently working with Dr. Verenice Heredia Espinoza on analyzing the unpublished collections from Los Guachimontones, Jalisco, to understand the spatiotemporal growth of the settlement. He has held residential fellowships at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington D.C., the Sainsbury Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, and the Getty Research Institute, and has participated in workshops at the Amerind Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, Yale University, Arizona State University, and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and the Casa Herrera in Guatemala. He has been invited professor at the Instit d'Art et Archéologie, Université Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne. Dr. Beekman is a co-author of La Cerámica Arqueológica de la Tradición Teuchitlán, Jalisco (2000), and of the first volume of the Historia de Jalisco (2015). He has edited or co-edited several books including Nonlinear Models for Archaeology and Anthropology (2005, with William Baden), La Tradición Teuchitlán (2008, with Phil Weigand and Rodrigo Esparza), Shaft Tombs and Figures in West Mexican Society (2016, with Robert Pickering), Migrations in Late Mesoamerica (2019), Ancient West Mexicos: Time, Space, and Diversity (2020, with Joshua Englehardt and Verenice Heredia), Anthropomorphic Representations in Highland Mesoamerica: Gods, Ancestors, and Human Beings (2020, with Brigitte Faugère), Mobility and Migration in Ancient Mesoamerica Cities (2021, with Marie-Charlotte Arnauld and Gregory Pereira), and Waves of Influence: Pacific Maritime Networks connecting Mexico, Central America, and northwestern South America (2022, with Colin McEwan). He has published various book chapters as well as articles in journals such as Latin American Antiquity, Ancient Mesoamerica, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Antiquity, and elsewhere.