Elizabeth Arkush
- Professor
- University of Pittsburgh
- arkush@pitt.edu
- ORCID: 0000-0002-9008-0280
- United States
- EST - Eastern Standard Time - GMT-5:00
Research areas and topics
Andean highlands, conflict, settlement organization
- Employment Sector: Academic
- Continents: South America
- Regions: Andes
- Materials: architecture, bioarchaeology, ethnohistory, Settlement archaeology, weapons and armor
- Analytical Skills: aerial survey, databases, dating, GIS, network analysis, remote sensing, survey
- Research Topics: climate change, conflict and warfare, historical ecology, landscapes, settlement patterns, social networks
- Nations: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru
Interest in Synthesis
I am interested in cross-cultural and comparative approaches generally, and I am committed to the idea that we do and can build cumulative structures of knowledge in archaeology, despite changing interpretive paradigms. My specific thematic interests in synthesis and comparison are listed below under “collaboration interests.” I also direct the Comparative Center for Archaeology at Pitt, which includes a growing, carefully curated set of open-access, bilingual archaeological datasets with full metadata documentation, designed for comparative use by researchers.
Collaboration Interests
My own research interests in collaboration and synthesis, including comparison between regions, lie in several areas in which I also have some expertise: 1) conflict and warfare, especially in relation to land use, climate, the (perceived) marginal value of labor, and regional systems of defense and mobility; 2) the internal organization of medium to large settlements as a window into social organization and site growth (number and layout of structures, internal divisions, permeability and movement, visibility and knowledge, etc.) – we have lots of data on this from late Andean sites; 3) political organization.