George L. Cowgill is an American anthropologist and archaeologist. He was the 1992 Distinguished Lecturer at the American Anthropological Association. He is currently professor emeritus at Arizona State University. He received his PhD from Harvard in 1963 with a dissertation on The Post-Classic Period in the Southern Maya Lowlands. He taught at Brandeis University between 1960 and 1990. See Anthropology. ... Archaeology or sometimes in American English archeology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... American Anthropological Association (AAA) was founded in 1902 and claims to be, the worlds largest professional organization of individuals interested in anthropology. Although there were several other American anthropological societies in existence at the turn of the 20th century, this new, national organization was formed to promote the science... Arizona State University (ASU) is a public institution of higher education and research with several campuses located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... Brandeis University is a private university in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. ...

He has carried out excavations and research at Teotihuacan in Mexico. With René Million, Cowgill spent years systematically mapping the city of Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico near modern Mexico City during the 1960s. In the late 1980s, he co-directed excavations at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid at Teotihuacan with Saburo Sugiyama and Ruben Cabrera. George Cowgill is also a pioneering researcher in the use of computers and quantitative methods in archaeology. Teotihuacan was the largest Pre-Columbian known city in the Americas, and the name Teotihuacan is used to refer to the civilization this city dominated, which at its greatest extent included most of Mesoamerica. ... The Valley of Mexico is a highlands plateau in central Mexico roughly coterminous with the present-day Distrito Federal and the eastern half of Estado de Mexico. ... It has been suggested that Mexican Federal District be merged into this article or section. ...

With regard to the Maya civilization, Cowgill stated that no single factor was responsible for the collapse of the Classic Maya and claims that military expansion was more of a factor than had previously been thought. 74. ...

Publications

• 1988 "The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations" (co-edited with Norman Yoffee). University of Arizona Press.

50+ published articles

External links

• FAMSI report