Rate My Professor Todd Surovell

Professor Todd Surovell serves as Professor of Archaeology and Director of the George C. Frison Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming. He earned a B.S. in Anthropology and Zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1995, an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1999, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 2003. His research focuses on the archaeology of hunter-gatherers and the first peoples of the New World, with specialization in the Paleoindian period. He has conducted fieldwork in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arizona, Wisconsin, Denmark, Israel, Mongolia, and South America, employing approaches from human behavioral ecology, mathematical modeling, computer simulation, and geoarchaeology to investigate topics including past human demography, subsistence, technology, mobility, Pleistocene extinctions, and New World colonization.

Surovell has held his current appointments at the University of Wyoming, where he also directs the Frison Institute. In 2025, he was named a President’s Distinguished Scholar. Key publications include the 2022 book Barger Gulch: A Folsom Campsite in the Rocky Mountains published by the University of Arizona Press, as well as peer-reviewed articles such as “Late Date of Human Arrival to North America” (PLOS One, 2022), “A mid-Holocene age for Monte Verde challenges the timeline of human colonization of South America” (Science, 2026), and multiple studies on the La Prele Mammoth site. His work has contributed to international discussions on early human history in the Americas and has been cited extensively. He teaches courses including Geoarchaeology, Quantitative Methods for Anthropologists, and Old World Archaeology.