Dr. Benjamin (Ben) Bellorado (Ph.D. University of Arizona, 2020) is an anthropological archaeologist who focuses on Indigenous cultures in the northern Southwest. For over 20 years, Ben has studied the material cultures of Native American peoples who lived in the Four Corners area. Ben is originally from Wyoming and received his bachelor’s degree at Fort Lewis College, his master’s degree from Northern Arizona University, and his doctorate from the University of Arizona. He also worked extensively in the Cultural Resource Management industry.
Ben has studied a diversity of topics throughout his career ranging from maize agriculture, to ceramic analysis, to experimental archaeology, and ethnography. Ben’s recent research focuses on documenting at-risk archaeological sites in Bears Ears National Monument, using tree-ring dating to date these sites, and revisiting old museum collections of ancient clothing. His doctoral research focused on understanding the ways in which Ancestral Pueblo peoples utilized textiles and textile depictions in other media to express complex ideas about various aspects of social identities in the tenth through thirteenth centuries. Ben joined the research team at Crow Canyon in 2020 as the Laboratory Manager and became Laboratory Director in 2021. In 2023 Dr. Bellorado became Curator of Archaeology at the Arizona State Museum.