About

Katelyn J. Bishop is an anthropological archaeologist and zooarchaeologist who studies human-animal relationships throughout the Americas, with a specific focus in the North American Southwest. Her research spans the last 4,000 years of the human past and covers geographic regions including New Mexico, Arizona, California, Guatemala, and Mexico. She concentrates on the 'non-economic' relationships between people and animals, emphasizing the active role that living animals and animal products played in maintaining or negotiating social organization and status, with particular attention to the significance of birds in past societies. Her current research examines the value of birds in the Pueblo region of the Southwest, specifically in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, between 800 and 1150 CE. She approaches her research from a zoontological perspective, acknowledging the mutually-influential nature of human-animal interactions in the past and exploring how animal agency constrained and affected human-bird interactions. Bishop works extensively with museum collections, archival documents, and legacy data. She supervises the Zooarchaeology Laboratory, which provides opportunities and space for undergraduate and graduate research. Her work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. Her collaborative projects include topics such as agricultural strategies, soil salinity, water control in Chaco Canyon, the significance of macaws in the Southwest, and the Agricultural Demographic Transition in the New World.

Research topics

• Cartography
• Geography
• Archaeology
• Sociology
• History
• Demography
• Ancient history
• Economic geography
• Biology
• Ecology

Selected publications

• In Dire Straits: The Resurrection and Extraction of the Dire Wolf, and the Current Colonial Basis of De-extinction Science

  Ethnobiology Letters · 2026-04-13

  articleOpen access

  In April of 2025, the for-profit biotech company Colossal Biosciences garnered mass media attention by announcing they had “de-extincted” the dire wolf (Aenocyon dirus) with the use of CRISPR gene-editing technology. Colossal and others heralded it as the future of endangered species conservation. In response, many in the larger scientific and conservation communities qualified or dismissed the claims to de-extinction based on sound genomic, phylogenetic, and taxonomic evidence. This debate, however, has occurred almost entirely within the confines of Western science and epistemology. We expand these critiques by highlighting the colonial, eugenic, and anthropocentric ideologies prevalent in Colossal’s approach to de-extinction, exemplified by what we call a “colonial grabbag” mythological framing of wolves. We argue that this is reflective of the larger colonial basis of current de-extinction science. Grounded in the fields of Indigenous Science and Animal Studies, we invite further reflection on the strategic, ethical, and moral considerations of de-extinction. Rather than arguing that such technologies and aims should be categorically rejected, we offer recommendations toward an anti-colonial and anti-anthropocentric science of de-extinction that is based in equity, reciprocity, and collective social good. We propose 1) a shift away from the isolationist approach that “resurrects” a species without regard for the larger ecosystem in which they existed in favor of a holistic ecology; 2) focusing the tools of de-extinction on currently threatened and endangered species and ecosystems; and 3) centering Indigenous Science and place-based knowledges by practicing transparent and sustained consultation and collaboration with Indigenous Nations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Integrating cross-collections research and archival study: new insights on macaws and parrots from Chaco Canyon, NM

  Journal of Anthropological Archaeology · 2025-05-12 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  • Collections-based research can address new questions while prioritizing the protection of the in situ archaeological record. • Museum-sponsored archaeology of the late 19th/early 20th centuries generated massive collections across the United States. • Cross-collections research can be combined with the use of legacy data and archival documents. • Macaws and parrots were imported to and raised within Chaco Canyon. • Reanalysis of macaw and parrot remains generates new insights into multiple aspects of the human-animal relationship. North American archaeology is increasingly embracing the study of existing museum collections to fulfill longstanding ethical obligations to document curated materials and to avoid unnecessary excavation of archaeological sites. Working with collections from historic excavations in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, this article confronts some of the challenges of collections-based research and demonstrates the benefits of overcoming them. Chaco was the center of a regional network that developed in the northern U.S. Southwest between AD 800 and 1150. Frequently referenced is the presence of nonlocal macaws and parrots, brought in and raised within the canyon. The foundation of our understanding of these birds, however, remains shaky. The research presented here integrates a zooarchaeological reanalysis with legacy data and archival documentation from more than 130 years of archaeological exploration. It provides a revised number of individuals, diachronic and spatial perspectives on deposition, evidence for the practice of curation, and insight into the care that birds were afforded. The construction of osteobiographies refocuses attention on these birds as living beings rather than as objects leveraged in trade and social status. Though often complex and time-consuming, working across multiple collections—both artifactual and archival—has the potential to provide new insights from “old” data.

  PublisherDOI

• Reconstructing Context for the Macaws and Parrots of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

  KIVA · 2025-07-03

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Social Construction of Backdirt in Chaco Archaeology

  Journal of Field Archaeology · 2024-02-08 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Archaeologists routinely create backdirt during excavation, but it is rarely acknowledged and remains surprisingly undertheorized. In this paper, we treat backdirt as a uniquely archaeological product that is socially constructed and guided by culturally and historically situated motivations. Using Chaco Canyon as a case study, we examine the ways in which project priorities changed over nearly 150 years of excavation and (more recently) re-excavation. We illustrate the importance of understanding backdirt as a social product by comparing the avifaunal assemblages created by two major excavation projects at the great house of Una Vida. Differences in these assemblages demonstrate how changes in research goals structured what was collected, what was left as backdirt, and how this ultimately impacts interpretations about Chaco history. Finally, we offer thoughts about the future role of backdirt in archaeological praxis as a space to welcome feminist and Indigenous perspectives in the construction of archaeological narratives.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reassessing a Century of Excavation Data and Faunal Remains from Chaco Canyon

  University Press of Colorado eBooks · 2023-03-24 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Bird Behavior and Biology: The Agentive Role of Birds in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

  University Press of Colorado eBooks · 2023 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Geography
  • Ecology
  • Biology

  The concept of the Anthropocene is based on the premise that humans have had a profound and increasing impact on our environments.Yet many environmental conditions (earthquakes, storms, tsunamis, fire, disease, and other dramatic natural phenomena) can easily overpower human capacities and result in significant change.Incremental processes such as soil creep, vegetation growth, oxidation, and material fatigue similarly act against human intentionality by causing deterioration and decay whose denouement is unpredictable in timing and magnitude.The sentient world of animals, in which behavioral patterns have evolved for viability in a diverse world of predators and reproduction strategies, similarly presents challenges when managed under the assumption that humans are the primary determinant of comportment.In this volume, we consider the agentive effects of natural phenomena to which the direct human response is primarily reactive.The objective is twofold: to highlight that even within the "Anthropocene, " not all natural phenomena can be anticipated, much less controlled, by humans; and second, to critically evaluate the variety of past human responses to natural and biological entities as seen through the archaeological record.The archaeological study of human-environmental dynamics has been heavily weighted on the "human" side of the equation.In recent years, that focus has been augmented by an increasingly pointed indictment of the way human activities can

  PublisherDOI

• Scarlet Macaws, Ritual, and Sociopolitical Organization in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

  University of Arizona Press eBooks · 2022 · 7 citations

  • Geography
  • Archaeology
  • Ancient history
  PublisherDOI

• Large-Scale Patterns in the Agricultural Demographic Transition of Mesoamerica and Southwestern North America

  American Antiquity · 2021 · 8 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Geography
  • Economic geography

  This article examines large-scale spatial and temporal patterns in the agricultural demographic transition (ADT) of Mesoamerica and southwestern North America (“the Southwest”). An analysis of published settlement and subsistence data suggests that the prolonged ADTs of these regions involved two successive eras of rapid population growth. Although both periods of growth were fueled by the introduction or development of more productive domesticates, they had distinctive demographic and social consequences. The first phase of the ADT occurred only in a scattering of favorable regions, between 1900 and 1000 BC in Mesoamerica and 1200 BC–AD 400 in the Southwest. Its demographic consequences were modest because it was underwritten by still rather unproductive maize. During this phase, increased population was confined mainly to a few agricultural heartlands, whereas surrounding regions remained sparsely populated. The second phase of the ADT was more dramatic in the spatial scale of its impact. This “high productivity” phase unfolded between 1000 and 200 BC in Mesoamerica and AD 500–1300 in the Southwest, and it was fueled by more productive maize varieties and improving agricultural technologies. It was accompanied by sweeping social, economic, and political changes in both regions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Paso de la Amada

  2021-06-29

  book
  PublisherDOI

• The Faunal Remains of Paso de la Amada

  2021-06-29 · 1 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Samantha G. Fladd

  Washington State University

  13 shared

• Adam Watson

  6 shared

• Kenneth B. Tankersley

  University of Cincinnati

  4 shared

• Stephen Plog

  4 shared

• Jon‐Paul McCool

  4 shared

• Lewis A. Owen

  4 shared

• Thomas A. Wake

  4 shared

• Nicholas P. Dunning

  University of Cincinnati

  4 shared

Education

• BA, Anthropology

  University of Virginia

• MA, PhD, Anthropology

  University of California Los Angeles