Bio


Michael Wilcox joined the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University in 2001 as an Assistant Professor. His dissertation, entitled "The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Communities of Resistance, Ethnic Conflict and Alliance Formation Among Upper Rio Grande Pueblos," articulates the social consequences of subordination, and explores the processes of boundary maintenance at both regional and communal levels. During his graduate studies at Harvard, he was very involved in strengthening the Harvard University Native American Program and in designing and teaching award-winning courses in Native American Studies.

His recent publications include: The Pueblo Revolt and the Mythology of Conquest: An Indigenous Archaeology of Contact, University of California Press (2009) (book blog at: http://www.ucpress.edu/blog/?p=5000); Marketing Conquest and the Vanishing Indian: An Indigenous Response to Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse; Journal of Social Archaeology, Vol. 10, No. 1, 92-117 (2010); Saving Indigenous Peoples From Ourselves: Separate but Equal Archaeology is Not Scientific Archaeology", American Antiquity 75(2), 2010; NAGPRA and Indigenous Peoples: The Social Context, Controversies and the Transformation of American Archaeology, in Voices in American Archaeology: 75th Anniversary Volume of the Society for American Archaeology, edited by Wendy Ashmore, Dorothy Lippert, and Barbara J. Mills (2010).

Professor Wilcox's main research interests include Native American ethnohistory in the American Southwest; the history of Pueblo Peoples in New Mexico; Indigenous Archaeology; ethnic identity and conflict; DNA, race and cultural identity in archaeology and popular culture; and the political and historical relationships between Native Americans, anthropologists and archaeologists.

Academic Appointments


  • Senior Lecturer, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity

2024-25 Courses


Stanford Advisees


All Publications


  • Reading Colonial Transitions: Archival Evidence and the Archaeology of Indigenous Action in Nineteenth-Century California AMERICAN ANTIQUITY Panich, L. M., Flores, G., Wilcox, M., Arellano, M. V. 2024; 89 (3): 495-511
  • The Continuous Path: Pueblo Movement and the Archaeology of Becoming (Book Review) NAIS-NATIVE AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES ASSOCIATION Book Review Authored by: Wilcox, M. V. 2021; 8 (2): 233-234
  • Marketing conquest and the vanishing Indian An Indigenous response to Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ARCHAEOLOGY Wilcox, M. 2010; 10 (1): 92-117