EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the tenth in an ongoing series of features highlighting authors and new books published by Torrey House Press in Utah.
In 2022, when R.E. Burrillo set out to write America Archaeology, he was primed to write a fun book about, in his words, “a pretty cool story.” Of course, there are plenty of familiar tropes associated with archaeology: Indiana Jones, Lara Croft and movie franchises such as The Mummy and Tomb Raiders, to name a few.
A pop culture connoisseur, Burrillo, an archaeologist based in Tucson, said that the Dungeons and Dragons game prepared him for the experiences working in the field. And, while he says films such as Dances with Wolves deserve their criticism, he writes that this film “absolutely nailed the ways in which native American lifestyles appeal to historic white dudes.”
Surprised to learn that no book had been published with his chosen title, Burrillo, armed with plenty of humor and blunt sass, plunged into writing a book for anyone who even have a smidgen of curiosity about a field that started with a “pedestrian infatuation with really old stuff.” Published by Torrey House Press, American Archaeology: Living History, Stolen Pasts, and Defending the Future chugs along at an entertaining and enthralling pace, as he chronicles how his field has shifted to “a focus on management, conservation and preservation of this incredible land, its rich history, and the people most intimately intertwined with both.”
But, as readers who either might be research professionals, hobbyists who want to experience what a professional archaeological excavation is like or just naturally curious intellectuals will discover, American Archaeology tells a story from the river of American history that is threatened by a government hell bent on eradicating it. After the 2024 presidential election, Burrillo’s book would take on more urgent currency. It was no longer just a “cool story.”
About 60% into the book, Burrillo summarizes the book’s raison d’etre perfectly:
History, as I keep repeating, is a living thing. How we look at it, interpret it, and treat it differs in many ways from how we look at, think about, treat actual living things— obviously. But it’s still crucial to remember that history is something that lives in our collective conscience, teaching lessons and issuing warnings, evolving through time and varying interpretations, and always in danger of being killed by people who don’t like what it has to say.
THE RIVETING HISTORICAL TOUR
American Archaeology is the essential companion to Burrillo’s first Torrey House Press release six years ago, Behind The Bears Ears: Exploring the Cultural and Natural Histories of a Sacred Landscape. At more than 400 pages, that book is the thickest the Utah-based press has published to date. And, its significance is magnified now, considering the present Federal government’s hostile insistence to diminish the Bears Ears monument to virtual nonexistence.
At the time of Burrillo’s first book release, The Utah Review called it a prologue. In acknowledging the dilemmas of achieving accuracy in describing “non-Western cultures, beliefs, and histories described almost entirely in Western terms,” Burrillo hopes for a “foundation … on which a multiplicity of perspectives might be built, as opposed to a concrete and dogmatic edifice to be venerated on its own.” Today, in American Archaeology, he reinforces and expands upon a point he made in his earlier book, when he wrote that “scientific archaeologists and traditionalist Native Americans haven’t had what you’d call a comfortable relationship.”
Likewise, he extols the virtues of history as a living entity in American Archaeology, building upon the words he wrote in his first book: “Discerning the sacred from the mundane isn’t easily quantifiable, which is why reciprocal dialogue between the Indigenous and archaeological communities is of paramount importance for studying the material-historic record of North America.” This point is reiterated many times, as he offers plenty of elucidating examples.
The historical tour Burrillo offers in this latest book is as riveting as it was in his earlier work. In an interview with The Utah Review, Burrillo said his writing style was inspired in part by personalities such as comedy writer John Oliver, who uses humor to scaffold sharp dives into public issues, as well as reading the content of cracked.com, which he said was “devoted to humorous intellectualism,” especially during the period of 2008-2014.
Reading Burrillo’s book fits the label, imparting an impressive amount of history and science while setting up enough markers with plenty of humor and pop culture references which gives American Archaeology its momentum. Burrillo is a connoisseur of the smart joke , on par with the ilk of Cracked.com alumni such as journalist Robert Evans who has produced podcasts such as Behind the Bastards and author Jason Pargin who has written successful comedic horror serial novels à la the style that made H.P. Lovecraft famous.
ARCHAEOLOGY AS A RESEARCH, SCHOLARLY DISCIPLINE
The approach works magnificently, as Burrillo reshapes the esoteric jargon of his discipline to give readers a lucid course in comprehending the evolution of American archaeology and its differences from European archaeology and, more importantly, from anthropology. In the U.S., most colleges and universities lump archaeology with anthropology and, in some instances, with social work and sociology as well. Burrillo is convinced that the proper and most significant home for archaeology as a discipline is in the school of history. On average, the number of college students who graduate with a major in anthropology each year outpaces those who specify archaeology as a major, by a ratio of more than 30:1.
For Burrillo, this is a contentious thing in academia, especially when one considers where most of the public gets their information about how archaeologists pursue their work. No doubt, the Indiana Jones blockbuster movie franchise had an impact, for better or worse. However, docuseries such as Netflix’s Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure and immensely popular offerings such as Ancient Aliens actually perpetuate the most offensive and colonialist sentiments while undercutting the genuine possible impacts of responsible archaeological research that emphasizes values of conservation and preservation in the larger historical perspective.
Barely past the introduction, Burrillo is already blunt about pervasive examples of pseudoarchaeology such as the current long-running Ancient Aliens series and Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods which was published nearly 60 years ago. In their attempt to streamline the Indigenous chronicle in the Americas to tantalizing hypotheses that ignore the actual complexities of its history, these examples, as Burrillo memorably states, “continue to spew fetid bullshit about how preliterate non-European people were patently incapable to doing anything beyond whacking each other with sticks without extraterrestrial assistance.” Other examples he cites in the book demonstrate how long-standing bullshit (his word) has supported insidious myths that unfortunately have even seeped into legitimate arenas of peer-reviewed research.
The concerns about going down a dangerous path are valid and more prominent than they really should be, as the study of history is warped by pseudoscientific and pseudoarchaeological claims about the Americas by entities such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the assertions of Biblical creationists, and occasional examples of how nationalism and archaeology have been close bedfellows for at least 200 years.
“The fact that Ancient Aliens will have been on the air for 14 years when this book hits shelves is troubling, as is the popularity of Netflix ‘documentary’ like Ancient Apocalypse and Queen Cleopatra,” Burrillo explains, “the former of which is entirely motivated by the Graham Hancock belief that actual archaeologists are part of a worldwide conspiracy to hide the truth about our species history, and the latter of which is a vanity project by Jada Pinkett Smith that asserts the entire nation of Egypt is wrong about its own past.”
Even more dangerous uses of pseudoarchaeology to legitimize genocidal nationalism and claims of a superior race are historical examples, respectively, such as Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the Nazi preoccupation with the supposed existence of a superior Aryan race, But Burrillo warns that in aggregate these pseudoarchaeological practices are “playing the same sport.” He adds, “The one that uses phony versions of the past as a motivator for how we treat people in the present.”
However, some examples of nationalism and archaeology being bedfellows can lead to positive outcomes. Mexico’s non-European ancestry became visible once again, thanks to the research of artifacts of the Aztec, Mayan, and earlier Teotihuacan cultures. “The name of Teotihuacan was given to it by the Aztecs when they found the place and its awesome but crumbling temples in the 1400s, and it roughly translates to ‘the place where the gods were created,’” Burrillo wrote. “Aztec architecture and religious iconography closely follow that of Teotihuacan in what appears to have been another case of using archaeology, or at least material history, to anchor a then-extant culture into a deeper history of the place.”
‘SYSPHEAN EFFORTS’
With positive and negative examples taken together, Burrillo emphasizes that material history will always be interpreted in whatever way people prefer. It also illustrates what Burrillo describes, have been “Sysphean efforts” of American archaeology to prove that Indigenous Americans were [and are] as fully human as anyone else. “People who say fiction doesn’t influence real world behavior have either never investigated the matter, or never lived in the real world,” he writes. “Popular media is inspired by culture, of course, but it inspires culture right back.”
The importance of this should not be underestimated. A significant advancement in American archaeology has been realizing, contrary to the stubborn belief of vanishing indigenous peoples, the idea of collecting and putting objects of their cultures on display in museums or similar purposes was undeniably disrespectful to peoples who definitely had not vanished. It has been more than three decades since federal legislation (such as The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), was enacted to repatriate human remains and sacred objects, but efforts have moved in fits and starts, at best.
Burrillo’s critique of NAGPRA is especially good. There are some appalling examples of how relevant human voices have been ignored. In fact, a published 2017 study of mitochondrial DNA collected from eight individuals who were buried together in a Pueblo Bonito room in Chaco Canyon, which “got a lot of love,” as Burrillo noted, also became part of an extensive investigation that led to ProPublica’s The Repatriation Project: The Delayed Return of Native Remains.
The series, published in 2023, coincided with a public policy process modifying regulations to improve enforcing NAGPRA’s original intent. Burillo’s critique of NAGPRA is notable throughout the book, as it illustrates the point of “includ[ing] human voices with the deepest roots in that past no matter how unscientific their perspectives might be.”
The remains, at the center of the 2017 study, had been stored in the National Museum of Natural History for well over a century after archaeologists had exhumed them. It was a Colorado rancher in the 19th century who also was an amateur archaeologist who first guided archaeologists to Chaco Canyon. The genetic tests carried out for the 2017 study revealed that the individuals had descended from a woman who also was buried there and the group’s lineage was shown to have spanned more than three centuries.
Published in Nature, the paper exploded in widespread coverage in the press and social media, propelled by memes and hashtags celebrating Girl Power and Moms Rule. “It was a cause célèbre that hit media streams at the height of the #MeToo movement,” Burrillo explains, “one that showed how the mightiest society in ancient North America appears to have been ruled by a matrilineal dynasty.” However, none of this surprised the peoples whose roots were traced to Chaco Canyon. As Burrillo reported, “A female director of the tribal historic preservation office at an Acoma Pueblo put it rather bluntly: ‘we could’ve told you that.’”
Among the findings ProPublica reported was that despite the advice of a peer researcher who was not involved with the project, the team made no attempt to communicate with the affiliated tribes, which is stipulated in the NAGPRA. Regardless of whether or not the remains can be traced to federally recognized tribal groups, Burrillo’s point encapsulates the problem:
Still, when all is said and done, any skeleton material found in the Americas that dates to before 1492 is almost certainly Indigenous rather than European… so the fact that any given individual may be tough to affiliate with a single or even multiple modern tribes, doesn’t mean it’s therefore a figment from the eternal void whose care lies solely with white people. They’re still the remains of the native America…
Relaying her experiences as an Indigenous journalist working on the ProPublica investigation, Mary Hudetz interviewed Clark Tenakhongva, a former vice president of the Hopi Tribe, who “believe they had great engineers, astronomers and doctors among their ancestors.” He said, “All the education and knowledge that we have — we have within our homes, within our kivas, within our plazas — came from here.”
NAGPRA’s modified regulations, which were passed during the Biden Administration, have reinvigorated a law that has sat essentially idle since its 1990 passage. “Since the regulations passed, there has been little pushback from museums and other impacted institutions, signifying that the culture truly has changed. Instead of fighting tooth and nail to keep what they believe is ‘theirs’, institutions are ready to cooperate, even if it means some objects may never come back on display,” Corrie Day wrote in a 2024 article published by the Nebraska Law Review. “The concerted effort between the Federal government, museums, Native American activists, and the broader public has resulted in a path for ancestors to recover dignity in death.” However, as Hudetz noted in her ProPublica reporting, “One expert we interviewed said that if the institutions continue repatriating at their current pace they would need another seven decades to consult with tribes and return what they have.”
In recent months, Speed Art Museum in Louisville and Portland Art Museum have repatriated cultural and sacred artifacts variously to the Southern Arapaho and Cheyenne Tribes and the Navajo Nation. The FBI repatriated mummified remains, amulets and an ushabti statue which had been originally placed in a tomb to Egypt during a ceremony in Los Angeles.
CULTURE MATTERS
Culture’s primacy matters. “Because collective memory can endure for far longer than most people would expect,” Burrillo explains. “It also speaks to how involvement of actual indigenous people in the practice of archaeology on indigenous material history is a good idea to say the very least.” The national monument designations for Bears Ears as well as The Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon— which encompassed multiple tribes in both instances—emphasized the unwielding durability of the ancestral cultural landscapes.
There also is the relentless political game of ping-pong putting these monuments in jeopardy. As important as The Antiquities Act of 1906, which happened to be passed under the watch of a president who was contemptuous toward Native Americans, is to the conservation cause, Burrillo zeroes on its problematic vagueness. “People of virtually any background can use it to make an argument for why something deserves protection.” He added, “The wealthy white guys who comprised the conservation movement when it started had, intentionally or not, set a tool on the bench that potentially any other person or group could come along and use.”
This book is marvelous for preparing and training archaeologists for the value of historiography in carrying out their professional duties with utmost respect, dignity, ethics and cultural sensitivity. The argument for aligning the discipline of archaeology with history instead of anthropology is compelling. A social science emphasis that prioritizes quantitative methodologies is problematic for archaeology because it mistakes “statistical generalities for concrete rules about the human condition, when cultural variability and individual behavioral adaptability are still the most human of things.”
As Burrillo notes, the current focus on cultural resource management is carried out primarily by for-profit enterprises, when what we need more urgently is cultivating and nourishing public scholarship with enlightened perspectives. “The problem in academic archaeology…is that members of older generations with older ideas still hold too many strings,” he explains. “Nonprofit enterprises rely on donors to keep operating, and most of those donors are older, avocational or enthusiast types who want their funding to result in shovels moving earth because that’s archaeology.”
Sharing the experience of a human behavioral ecologist who was gathering research for an overview of modern hunter-gatherers and discovered the strongest predictor was “ethnolinguistic membership,” Burrillo put it plainly: “Culture counts in other words. A lot. You can’t just push it away with complicated math or hijacked theoretical alternatives like ‘prestige behavior’ when people don’t do what your calculations tell you they should.”
The significance of Burrillo’s point cannot be overstated. Take the pernicious myth of the vanishing Indian, made intractable by the so-called American classic novel, The Last of the Mohicans, set during the French and Indian War, by James Fenimore Cooper and published in 1826. It has been relentlessly perpetuated, as the novel has been adapted in at least 11 films, along with numerous television, radio and opera productions, comic books, foreign language translations and even a manga adaptation in Japan.
HOPEFUL SIGNS OF COLLABORATION
This explains why the aforementioned archaeological-genomics study about the Pueblo culture in Chaco Canyon was so egregious. Eight years after the publication of that study, findings of a fresh study were published in a 2025 issue of Nature. This one was entirely different, as it signified a monumental step forward in how archaeological research can proceed when scientists collaborate with Native Americans.
Intended to address gaps in traditional knowledge and expand their understanding of their ancestral roots, the sovereign nation of Picuris Pueblo in the Northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico initiated the study with an international team of researchers.
The results of genomes generated from 16 ancient Picuris individuals and 13 present-day members, confirmed evidence of genetic continuity between ancient and present-day Picuris, and more broadly with ancestral Puebloans from Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, the focus of the earlier mentioned study.
The implications are ground-breaking. One, the researchers note the results “challenge claims of depopulation or disappearance in the area, and establish a genetic component to suspected cultural affiliation between a present-day group and Ancestral Puebloan heritage.” Even more important, echoing Burrillo’s call for how scientists and indigenous peoples can collaborate on archaeological research especially when issues of data sovereignty are present, is what the study’s authors concluded in their article:
Tribal leadership was involved in both drafting the research agreement and crafting the key findings of the work. Furthermore, Picuris Pueblo retained the right to curtail research at any point in the collaboration, and publication of results continues to be the sole decision of Picuris leadership. These guidelines and policies were an essential aspect of this collaborative research between non-Indigenous researchers and an Indigenous stakeholder community.
This is precisely what Burrillo envisions as a model to emulate in American archaeological research. “First, there’s a myth of the vanishing Indian, which in this case covers around Chaco Canyon like a fly around feces, floating a top, the argument that Chaco’s collapse lead to a total abandonment of the surrounding region,” he states in his signature voice. “For generations, these erroneous hypotheses served primarily,” he continues, “as a political expedient for disenfranchising them from the political process.”
Studies like this show a hopeful future for archaeological research in an era when many think land acknowledgments (which ironically can perpetuate the vanishing Indian myth when they are stated perfunctorily) are often sufficient. We can appreciate the moral and ethical value of good-natured intentions, but we can do more than be satisfied with performative gestures.
Noting “the literal academic value of collaboration with the people whose history you’re trying to reconstruct,” Burrillo explains, “I’ve mentioned over and over how the best way to understand the deep history of the Americas is to put down the calculator and prey-choice models (or at least put them in your backpocket for a moment) and talk to the people whose ancestors lived that history.”
OTHER RESOURCES
For those looking for other good resources to augment Burrillo’s book, The Utah Review asked the author about personal favorites to recommend to readers. They include:
Milo Rossi, a/k/a Miniminuteman, on YouTube. Burrillo added, “Arguably the best at public-facing fun archaeology video content right now.”
Dr. Z the Archaeologist, a/k/a Dr. Z on Instagram. “She’s a riot, very knowledgeable and endearing all at once,” he said.
Steve Lekson, Burrillo said, has done a great job writing for the public in his books A History of the Ancient Southwest (University of New Mexico Press) and The Archaeology of the Native American Southwest.
Ken Federer is hands-down the best author on dispelling pseudoarchaeology and archaeological myths, chiefly with his book (now in its eleventh edition and published by Oxford University Press) Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries, according to Burrillo.
And as for television shows, Discovery Channel’s Expedition Unknown does, as Burrillo explains, a remarkable job of keeping things factual and respectful.