Dr. L.s. Borck

Biography

Lewis Borck is a lecturer and researcher at Leiden University. He obtained his BA (2007) in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico and his MA (2012) and PhD (2016) in Anthropology from the University of Arizona. He began work with the NWO Island Networks project in 2016 and with the Nexus 1492 ERC Synergy Project in 2017. Since beginning work with the Caribbean Research Group at Leiden University, Lewis has leveraged his methodological interests to begin to ask questions about the formation of communities, the transmission of information, and to explore how archaeologists and potters differentially experience and interpret the ceramics they interact with on a daily basis.

Research Interest

In the last ten years, he has conducted research in the Gallina region of the northern American Southwest in the state of New Mexico, and across the southern American Southwest along the border between Mexico and the U.S. state of Arizona. Lewis’s research explores how new theoretical approaches in archaeology can help uncover bias in interpretation. He also investigates horizontal forms of complexity and how the failure of this type of complexity often led to the rise of social inequality. He applies these interests to the study of the material cultures of past peoples to focus on how social movements shaped religion and politics. To analyze the data obtained from the archaeological record, Lewis uses both GIS and social network analysis.