TIMOTHY L. MCANDREWS, PH.D.

I am a Professor of Archaeology, and I offer courses on Andean Archaeology, Historical Archaeology, Theory and History of Archaeology, and Cultural Resource Management. I also teach Introduction to Physical Anthropology, the only lab science course offered in the College of Liberal Studies. I have conducted extensive settlement pattern research in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes in studying the organization and evolution of regional social, economic, and political institutions. In addition, I have conducted a great deal of CRM research in the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, West Virginia, and Virginia. I have presented and published results of my research in the United States and South America.  I am currently engaged in a long-term research project focusing on the earliest village settlements in the Bolivian highlands in the Department of Cochabamba.

In addition to having strong theoretical interests in early village-based society, I am extremely interested in the process of urbanization and the evolution of highly complex socio-political forms. In particular I am interested in the rise of the complex society that built the impressive prehispanic urban settlement of Tiwanaku on the southern shores of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. 

Kalassasaya Temple

In order to understand how Tiwanaku developed, archaeologists have researched the Formative Period in the Lake Titicaca Basin and beyond. I have closely examined the nature of Tiwanaku's political control within and beyond its altiplano heartland through research in Moquegua, Peru, and Cochabamba, Bolivia, two of the distant regions impacted by Tiwanaku socio-cultural and political influence.

Sunset over Lake Titicaca