J. Daniel Rogers

Rogers

J. Daniel Rogers is Curator of Archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution. His area of specialization is North American and Central Asian Archaeology. Dr. Rogers’ research interests include: Analysis of social change using ethnohistorical, archaeological, and computational methodologies; the social and community role of museums; theories of meaning and the role of the individual; analysis of human interactions with the environment; the rise of states and empires; Inner Asian history and archaeology; analysis of culture contact in the North America Great Plains, the Caribbean, and Central Mexico; technical analysis of ceramics; agent-based computational simulations.

His recent work explores the human impact on the environment as evidenced by archaeology. Through National Science Foundation grants, Dr. Rogers and collaborators at George Mason University are using agent-based simulations to model the rise and fall of Inner Asian empires and adaptation to extreme weather. The team also explores long-term human impacts on the environment, especially the sustainability and resilience of different social systems.

Currently, Rogers is the Co-PI on a multi-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, Cyber-Enabled Understanding of Complexity in Socio-Ecological Systems Using Computational Thinking with his colleagues, Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, (PI), Sean Luke (Co-PI), and Paul Schopf (Co-PI), which follows their work on a previous NSF grant, Agent-Based Dynamics of Social Complexity: Modeling Adaptive Behavior and Long-Term Change in Inner Asia, from 2006-2010.

Dr. Rogers received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, his M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma, and his
B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. He is an Affiliate Professor at George Mason University and has taught Origins of Social Complexity in the Department of Computational Social Science, and also teaches museum studies at The George Washington University.

Visit Dr. Rogers’s Web page.

Contact Information
Office: Department of Anthropology
National Museum of Natural History
MRC 112
Smithsonian Institution
10th and Constitution Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20560

Telephone: 202-633-1895
Fax: 202-357-2208
E-mail: rogersd@si.edu