Skip navigation.
New Mexico State University

Faculty Anthropology

Rani Alexander: Dr. Alexander is an archaeologist whose interests include Mesoamerican complex societies, colonial ethnohistory, and political economy.
Brenda Benefit: Dr. Benefit is a biological anthropologist focusing on the evolution of Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene catarrhine primates (Old World monkeys and apes) in Africa, paleoecology, dental variation, and dental correlates of diet (including functional morphology and enamel microwear) in living and fossil primates.
Christine Eber: Dr. Eber is a cultural anthropologist whose areas of research include gender, religion, art, humanistic anthropology, feminist theory, women's studies, and indigenous peoples of Mexico.
Weldon Lamb:Dr.Lamb is an archaeologist with special interests in Maya astronomy, calendrics and hieroglyphic writing.
Lawrence L. Loendorf: Dr. Loendorf is an archaeologist whose research focuses on the Great Plains, the U. S. Southwest, ethnography, and rock art.
Lisa Lucero: Dr. Lucero is an archaeologist whose interests include Mesoamerica, political power, and ritual. Her resource control and ritual articulate in the emergence of political leaders, particularly in the Maya lowlands.
Monte McCrossin: Dr. McCrossin is a biological anthropologist whose interests include the following topics: fossil evidence for human evolution; paleoanthropology of Africa (study of human origins that comes from integration of evidence from biological anthropology and paleolithic archaeology); the ecology, behavior, and adaptive history of non-human primates; dietary and locomotor adaptations; paleoecology.
Beth O'Leary: Dr. O’Leary’s areas of interest include both cultural anthropology and archeology. She has done research on Athapaskan cultures in Canada and the U.S. She also has 25 years of experience in cultural resource management in New Mexico and west Texas. She is also a published fiction writer.
Don Pepion: Mr. Pepion iscurrently preparing an article for publication on a massacre of Blackfeet Indians in 1870. He's continuing research on a theme called the "Myth of the Chief" that is examining leadership within the social organization of Native Americans and how it was impacted and influenced by European contact after 1492. The research exams the implication of the Spanish, British and later the United States creating "Chiefs" by gifting certain individuals within a tribe.
Terry Reynolds: As an anthropologist, Dr. Reynolds is an ethnohistorian/ethnographer. Her research interests include Southwestern arts and crafts production; historic village economies among Southwestern peoples; and the ethnohistory of peoples in the Mesilla and El Paso Valleys.
Scott Rushforth: Dr. Rushforth is a cultural anthropologist and linguistic anthropologist who studies American Indian language, culture, and society. He is especially interested in Athapaskan languages and cultures.
Lois Stanford: Dr. Stanford is a cultural anthropologist who focuses on economic anthropology, development, Latin America, and Mexico.
Ed Staski: Dr. Staski is an historical archaeologist who is interested in ethnic relations, overseas Chinese peoples, the 19th century American frontier, and human evolution.
Wenda Trevathan: Dr. Trevathan is a biological anthropologist concerned with childbirth, medical anthropology, nutritional anthropology, human sexuality, and human evolution.
William Walker: Dr. Walker is an archaeologist who studies southwestern archaeology and ritual in prehistory.

Back to Dept. of Anthropology Web Site