Dr. Fumi Arakawa is the Associate Director of Research at the Indiana University Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology (IUMAA) and an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University. He is also a Research Associate with Crow Canyon Archaeology Center in Cortez, Colorado.

Fumi’s primary interest in archaeology is reconstructing sociopolitical organization among the Ancestral Puebloans in the Four-Corners region of southeast Utah/southwest Colorado and the Mimbres-Mogollon people in the Gila National Forest, New Mexico. His research examines how social scales and power changed through time in small-scale agricultural societies using demographic, environmental, and material (lithics and pottery) data. To tackle questions of power and scale, he has gained a strong background in archaeological methods and theories, geology, and chemical compositional analyses. Fumi has also explored topics related to cultural trajectory, gender division of labor, and exchange systems.

At Indiana University, Fumi is thrilled to explore and expand the topic of multi-vocal studies in archaeology and the concept of “decolonizing” museums. To achieve this goal, he plans to carry out collections-based research using the IUMAA’s orphan and legacy collections. In addition to the museum research, Fumi will continue to direct field school (or field project) programs at Twin Pines (the Mimbres site) on the Gila National Forest in New Mexico and areas of Montezuma Canyon and Alkali Ridge in southeast Utah. Working with Indiana University students, he intends to collaborate the archaeological research with descendant groups (e.g., Zuni, Hopi, and other Native American groups in the American Southwest) and develop mutually beneficial relationships. Fumi is excited to work with both undergraduate and graduate students at IU soon!