Timothy Pauketat - Academic Career

Academic Career

Pauketat began his career gaining formal experience as an intern with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers while attending Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville as an undergraduate from 1980-1983. After graduating from SIU with B.S. in Anthropology and Earth Sciences, he gained further field experience as a staff archaeologist with a cultural resource management firm, The Center for American Archaeology, at Kampsville, Illinois and as an assistant curator and research assistant for SIU-Carbondale from 1983-1984. He continued his higher education at SIU, earning a M.A. in Anthropology in 1986. After working for the Illinois State Museum and Michigan’s museum of anthropology from 1984-88 he attained his PhD in Anthropology in 1991 from the University of Michigan. After his post-doctoral work with the University of Illinois as a visiting researcher, he was hired as an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma at Norman in 1992. During his tenure there he published his first single-authored book The Ascent of Chiefs: Cahokia and Mississippian Politics in Native North America. In 1996 was hired as an associate professor at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. In 1998 he became an associate professor at the University of Illinois, eventually becoming a full professor in 2005 after publishing numerous professional papers, book chapters, two more books and earning a Distinguished Service award from his department. He regularly teaches classes such as “Introductory World Archaeology” and “Archaeological Theory". He also frequently leads the annual University of Illinois archaeological field school