Meet January’s Speaker, Steve Nash. 🎉

Steve Nash has been President & CEO of Archaeology Southwest in Tucson since January, 2024. Prior to then he served as Director of Anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (2006-2023) and Head of Collections in the Department of Anthropology at the Field Museum in his hometown of Chicago. Steve earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Anthropology at the University of Arizona and his B.A. at Grinnell College in Iowa.

As Steve likes to say, “the epic sweep of humanity is indeed mighty cool to behold.” Over the course of his career, he has done archaeological fieldwork on Neanderthal sites in southwestern France and in sites across the American Southwest, including tree-ring dating at Mesa Verde National Park.

He is a recognized world leader in the voluntary repatriation and return of ancestors and belongings that are housed in museums in the absence of informed consent, most notably to the Mijikenda people of coastal Kenya. He has published 10 books and dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as more than 60 “Curiosities” columns at the award-winning on-line anthropology magazine SAPIENS.org.