Cathy Cameron

I am an archaeologist and have spent much of my career working in the American Southwest, focusing especially on the Chaco Phenomenon. I worked in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, in northeastern Arizona and in SE Utah. I conducted excavations at the Bluff Great House site in Bluff, Utah as part of the University of Colorado field school. Chaco and After in the Northern San Juan: Excavations at the Bluff Great House was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2009. I have also overseen projects in the Comb Wash area of SE Utah undertaken by the Bureau of Land Management. I have long-term interests in prehistoric population dynamics, especially processes of abandonment and migration, and have published books and articles on such processes in the Southwest and elsewhere. For the past two decades I have conducted a study of a particular type of ancient migrant - captives. In 2016, I published Captives:  How Stolen People Changed the World (University of Nebraska Press).  More recently (2024) I published an edited volume with Brenda J. Bowser Landscapes of Movement and Predation: Perspectives from Archaeology, History, and Anthropology.  My captives study has also resulted in a number of journal articles, book chapters, and other edited volumes.  

Selected Publications

• 2025 Cameron, Catherine M. Warfare, Captive-Taking, Enslavement, and the Creation of Power.  In Warfare and the Dynamics of Political Control, edited by Brian R. Billman.  Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
• 2024 Bowser, Brenda J. and Catherine M. Cameron, editors Landscapes of Movement and Predation: Perspectives from Archaeology, History, and Anthropology, Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
• 2024 Cameron, Catherine M. Living in Landscapes of Predation.  In Landscapes of Movement and Predation: Perspectives from Archaeology, History, and Anthropology, edited by Brenda J. Bowser and Catherine M. Cameron.  Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
• 2023 Cameron, Catherine M.  Injection:  An Archaeological Approach to Slavery.  In The Palgrave
  Handbook of Global Slavery throughout History, edited by Damian A. Pargas and Juliane Schiel, 
  pp. 109-118.  Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland.  
• 2022 Cameron, Catherine M.  Captives:  The Invisible Migrant.  In Homo Migrans: Modeling Mobility and  Migration in Human History, edited by Megan Daniels.  IEMA Proceedings, State University of New York Press.  
• 2022 Gutierrez, Gerardo and Catherine M. Cameron. Not Just Disease:  Ideology of Risk and Indigenous Population Decline in North America.  Economic Anthropology (The Symposium) 9:155-157.
• 2019 Cameron, Catherine M.  Beyond Trade and Exchange: A New Look at Diffusion.  In Interaction
  and Connectivity in the Greater Southwest, edited by Karen Harry and Barbara Roth, University Press of Colorado, Boulder
• 2019 Ellyson, Laura, Timothy Kohler, and Catherine M. Cameron How Far from Chaco to Oraibi?
  Quantifying Inequality among Pueblo Households.  Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 55:1 – 14.  
• 2018 Lenski, Noel and Catherine M.  Cameron, editors.   What is a Slave Society: The Practice of  Slavery in Global Perspective.   Cambridge University Press. (2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
• 2016 Cameron, Catherine M.  Captives:  How Stolen People Changed the World.  University of Nebraska Press.  
• 2015 Catherine M. Cameron, Paul Kelton, and Alan Swedlund, editors.  Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America, University of Arizona Press, Tucson. (2016 CHOICE Outstanding  Academic Title
• 2013 Cameron, Catherine M. How People Moved Among Ancient Societies: Broadening the View.
  American Anthropologist 115 (2):218-231.  (Winner 2016 Gordon R. Willey Prize,  American Anthropological Association.)