Judson Finley, Ph.D.

Field: Anthropology, Sociology
Areas of Focus: Agriculture, Archaeology, Climate Change, Cultural Justice, Cultural research, Paleoecology

Expertise

• archaeology
• geoarchaeology
• paleoecology
• climate change
• environmental reconstruction
• dryland agriculture
• cultural resource management
• cultural justice

Bio

Judson Finley is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Washington State University in 2008.

Finley is an archaeologist who works at the intersection of archaeology, geoscience, and environmental change. His work focuses on the understanding the environmental context for the development of dryland maize agricultural systems in northern Utah. This work uses archaeological radiocarbon dating, tree ring analysis, and they study of arroyo formation to understand the constraints on the development and growth of Indigenous agricultural societies.

Finley’s work also uses geochemical analysis of clay and obsidian artifacts to understand the social history of Indigenous Shoshone ancestors in the Greater Yellowstone Area. Finley is actively engaged in Cultural Resource Management and has analyzed the ways in which federal environmental policies can be used as tools of social and cultural justice in contemporary Indigenous communities in the Intermountain West.