J. Mark Kenoyer, Director, SASLI Summer Program in Madison

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Professor in Anthropology , teaches archaeology and ancient technology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has taught at Madison since 1985 and is currently Director for the Center for South Asia as well as Director of SASLI.

His main focus is on the Indus Valley Civilization and he has worked in Pakistan and India for the past 26 years. Dr. Kenoyer was born in India and lived there until he came to the U.S. for college. He has a BA in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley and completed his MA and PhD (1983) in South Asian Archaeology from the same university. He speaks several South Asian languages and is fluent in Urdu/Hindi, which is the major language used in Pakistan and northern India. He has conducted archaeological research and excavations at both Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, two of the most important early sites in Pakistan, and has also worked in western and central India. He has a special interest in ancient technologies and crafts, socio-economic and political organization as well as religion. These interests have led him to study a broad range of cultural periods in South Asia as well as other regions of the world.

Since 1986 he has been the Co-director and Field Director of the Harappa Archaeological Research Project in Pakistan, a long term study of urban development in the Indus Valley. He was Guest Curator at the Elvehjem Museum of Art, Madison for the exhibition on the Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, which toured the U.S. in 1998-1999. His work was most recently featured in a special 2005 issue of Scientific American and on the website http://www.harappa.com.