Kurt F. Anschuetz (Ph.D., University of Michigan 1998; RPA 28575601) is a cultural anthropologist and archaeologist based in Albuquerque. His specialties include late Ancestral Pueblo and early Historic Pueblo agricultural land and water use, cultural landscapes, and social organization. His everyday work includes providing technical assistance to traditional and historic Native American, Hispano, and Anglo communities working to protect and sustain their relationships with the land, the water, and their cultural heritage resources as regional development proceeds. Since 1998, Kurt has served as an Expert Witness in water adjudications directly for the Pueblo of Acoma in west-central New Mexico and for the U.S. Department of Justice on behalf of various Tewa, Eastern Keres, and Northern Tiwa Pueblos in the northern Rio Grande region. In this water case work, Kurt contributes to an interdisciplinary team documenting the existence and prehispanic priority date of aboriginal agricultural water management technologies that diverted permanent and seasonal water flows for crop irrigation.
Kurt has also assisted the Pueblo of Acoma in conducting (1) a Traditional Cultural Properties study of the San Juan Basin sponsored by the Bureau of Reclamation, and (2) an ethnographic study of the Pueblo’s associations and stewardship of the Greater Chaco Region cultural landscape for the Chaco Heritage Tribal Association. In partnership with cultural advisors, this work has included the study of Ancestral Pueblo agricultural technologies and landscapes important to Acoma’s migration history and the lessons the Ancestors learned that enabled them to produce crops of native and domesticated plants during their epic journey across the Greater Chaco Region.