Lessons Learned from the Pueblo Indians of the Mesa Verde Region: Mark Varien at TEDxSonomaCounty

Mark Varien currently serves as the executive vice president of the newly established Crow Canyon Research Institute in Cortez, Colorado. Formed as a new initiative in 2014, the Crow Canyon Research Institute seeks to create an institution without walls, breaking down disciplinary barriers and enabling social scientists―archaeologists, economists, geographers, sociologists, and evolutionary psychologists, to name a few―to accomplish two broad objectives: create more detailed, inclusive, and multivocal histories of the many cultural groups who have lived in the greater Southwest, and then compare those histories to others from around the world to better understand how and why cultures change, and to discern how the world came to be the way it is today.

Mark has conducted archaeology throughout the western United States, in Central America, and in the South Pacific. But the primary focus of his research is the Southwest United States. His work in the Mesa Verde region of southwestern Colorado began in 1979 and continues to the present. He joined the staff at Crow Canyon in 1987, where he served as a research archaeologist (1987−1997), director of research (1997−2007), vice president of programs (2007--2010), Research and Education Chair (2010--2014). Crow Canyon is an internationally renowned institution with a three-part mission: to increase knowledge of the human experience through archaeological research, to conduct that research in the context of public education programs, and to design and deliver those research and education programs in partnership with American Indians.

www.crowcanyon.org

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