John W. Olsen is Regents’ Professor of Anthropology, Executive Director of the Je Tsongkhapa Endowment for Central and Inner Asian Archaeology and Co-Director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Arizona. He attended Florida State University and received Bachelor of Arts degrees with Highest Distinction and Honors in Anthropology and Oriental Studies from the University of Arizona (1976). Olsen holds Master of Arts (1977) and Doctor of Philosophy (1980) degrees in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. His research focuses on the Pleistocene prehistory of arid lands and high elevations in Central and Inner Asia. Dr. Olsen has conducted archaeological fieldwork recently in the now independent Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, and in Russia, China (especially Tibet), and Mongolia. He is currently Co-Director of the Joint Mongolian-Russian-American Archaeological Expeditions and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Zhoukoudian International Paleoanthropological Research Center in Beijing. Olsen teaches upper-division undergraduate and graduate-level courses on East Asian, especially Chinese, prehistory and advises students working on archaeological topics in many sub-regions of Central and Eastern Eurasia.
Contact information: School of Anthropology, The University of Arizona, 1009 E. South Campus Drive, Tucson, Arizona 85721-0030 U.S.A.; Telephone: +1 (520) 621-4321, FAX: +1 (520) 621-2088, e-mail: jwo@arizona.edu.
URLs: http://anthropology.arizona.edu/ and http://jmraae.arizona.edu