Robert Weiner

I study Indigenous history in the North American Southwest, especially at the precolonial site of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, in partnership with descendant Diné (Navajo) and Pueblo community members. My research and teaching combine approaches from archaeology, ethnohistory, cultural anthropology, art history, and religious studies. I have written on various aspects of Chacoan history, including monumental roads, religion and ritual, gambling, and Diné oral traditions. Since 2019, I’ve conducted collaborative archaeological fieldwork on the Navajo Nation and elsewhere throughout the Four Corners. Currently, I’m finishing a book project about monumental roads in the Chaco World: the places they led, practices carried out on them, and their ongoing significance in Diné and Pueblo cultures.

I teach classes about archaeology, the precolonial Americas, Indigenous religious traditions, and ritual movement. Broadly, my teaching and scholarship are driven by two objectives: 1) developing more culturally informed and just histories of the precolonial Indigenous North American past, and 2) exploring big questions, such as: how do spiritual beliefs and practices change history? why do so many cultures build monuments? how do societies and individuals, past and present, create meaning?

My research has appeared in over twenty peer-reviewed academic articles and book chapters, as well as on PBS and the History Channel, and in various podcasts and media outlets. I earned concurrent BA-MA degrees at Brown University and a PhD from University of Colorado Boulder, which I completed as the 2022-2023 Paloheimo Fellow at the School for Advanced Research. I then held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth College.

Select publications:
In press The Return of the Gambler: Mythemic (Pre)historiography in the U.S. Southwest. In Writing Southwest Archaeology: Historical Method and the Indigenous Past, edited by Severin M. Fowles, Scott G. Ortman, and Ruth M. Van Dyke. School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe.

In press (lead author with Taft Blackhorse Jr., Richard A. Friedman, and John R. Stein.) Chacoan Roads Diné Histories: Insights from Fieldwork, Cultural Knowledge, and Remote Sensing. In Proceedings of the 18th Southwest Symposium, edited by Judith Habicht-Mauche and Maxine McBrinn. University Press of Colorado, Louisville.

2025  Processing Into the Past: The Chaco South Road as a Multi-Century Religious Corridor. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 33(20).

2025  (lead author with Scott G. Ortman) Landscapes, Religion, and Social Change in Pueblo History. American Antiquity 90(3):530-554.

2025  (lead author with Richard A. Friedman and John R. Stein) Parallel Roads, Solstice, and Sacred Geography at the Gasco Site: A Chacoan Ritual Landscape. Antiquity 99(404): 500–516.

2024 (with Felipe Rojas) Choreographic Empathy Beyond the Human. World Archaeology 56(4):440-458.

2021  (lead author with Klara Kelley)   Asdzáán Náhodidáhí (Lady Picker-Up) at Fajada Butte: Astronomy, Landscape, and the Basketmaker III Origins of Chacoan Ceremonialism. Kiva 87(3):268-294.

2018  Socio-Political, Ceremonial, and Economic Aspects of Gambling in Ancient North America: The Case Study of Chaco Canyon. American Antiquity 83(1):34-53.

2017  (with Richard A. Friedman and Anna Sofaer)  Remote Sensing of Chaco Roads Revisited: LiDAR Documentation of the Great North Road and Aztec Airport Mesa Road. Advances in Archaeological Practice 5(4):365-381.

2015  A Sensory Approach to Exotica, Ritual Practice, and Cosmology at Chaco Canyon. Kiva 81(3-4):220-246.