| | | | Dr. John Olsen is a Regents' Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and the director of the Je Tsongkhapa Endowment for Central and Inner Asian Archaeology at the University of Arizona.
Olsen is concurrently co-director of the Joint Mongolian-Russian-American Archaeological Expeditions and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Zhoukoudian International Paleoanthropological Research Center in Beijing. He is one of only a handful of foreign scholars to be awarded academic titles by the Mongolian Academy of Humanitarian Sciences (Academician, 1998) and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences (Doctoris Archaeologiae Honoris Causa, 2003).
He received his Bachelor of Arts (Summa Cum Laude, Honors in Anthropology & Oriental Studies) from the University of Arizona (1976), Master of Arts (Anthropology) from the University of California at Berkeley (1977) and Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) at the University of California at Berkeley (1980).
Olsen's research interests include eastern Eurasian prehistory with temporal and geographical foci on the Paleolithic of arid and high-altitude Central and Inner Asia, particularly Mongolia, Tibet (sensu lato), and the Trans-Himalaya; Northeast Asia; Saharan North Africa, especially the Libyan Desert; paleoecology and the impact of environmental degradation on prehistoric societies in arid zones; cultural ecology and environmental archaeology with emphasis on zooarchaeology, especially animal husbandry among pastoral and nomadic societies; spatial analysis in archaeology, including applications of remote sensing and geographic information systems.
Dr. Olsen has conducted archaeological fieldwork in the United States (Florida & Arizona), Colombia, Belize, the Philippines, Egypt, the Sudan, the People’s Republic of China (Xinjiang, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Gansu, & Ningxia), Việt Nam, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Türkmenistan, the Russian Federation (Siberia and the Altai Republic), Mongolia, and Tibet. | | | | | |
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