Dean E. Arnold is adjunct curator of anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and professor emeritus of anthropology at Wheaton College in Illinois, where he taught for thirty-nine years. He has done fieldwork in Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, and the Southwest; authored six books, including the seminal Ceramic Theory and Cultural Process; coedited two books; and published more than sixty articles about potters, pottery, and pottery production and related subjects (such as Maya Blue). Arnold was a Fulbright Scholar in Mexico and Peru, a visiting fellow at Clare Hall at University of Cambridge in 1985, and a visiting scholar at the Department of Archaeology there in 1985, 1992, and 2000. He received the Society for American Archaeology’s Award for Excellence in Ceramic Studies in 1996.
