Anita Cook

Anita G. Cook is an archaeologist specializing in the Central Andes with over 42 years of research in the region. She has conducted archaeological tours in the Andes since 1987. As Professor Emerita she teaches online courses on the Incas and the Ancient Cultures of the Andes at The Catholic University of America in Washington DC. She has been visiting Professor of Anthropology at the National University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga, Ayacucho, Peru and served as Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Cook received Municipal Honorary Recognition and a Medal for defending and preserving the site of Conchopata-in Ayacucho, Peru. As director of the Lower Ica Valley Archaeological Project and co-director of the Conchopata Archaeological Project her research focuses on the emergence of early Andean States and empires in particular the Wari and Tiwnaku predecessors of the Incas with a particular focus on material culture, the visual arts, and iconography.

Her research has been internationally recognized through grant and fellowship awards including: the Fulbright Commission for field research; National Endowment for the Humanities, an in residence fellowship and Summer Research grants from Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University; and another in residence Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellowship, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, The National Gallery of Art and most recently with the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Dr. Cook is the author of Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru, edited by Elizabeth Benson and Anita Cook (2001) and Wari y Tiwanaku: entre el estilo y la imagen (1994), and numerous articles. She has been a consultant for national and international museum exhibits, research seminars and sponsored research programs. In addition, she is active in conservation efforts to protect threatened cultural remains in Andean South America and is a founding member of the Latin American and Latino Program of The Catholic University of America.

Regina Harrison

Regina Harrison is a specialist in the language of the Incas, Quechua.  She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and is Professor Emerita of Latin American Literatures and Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland.  Her first book, Signs, Songs, and Memory in the Andes: Translating Quechua Language and Culture (1989), won several prizes, including the Kovacs Award from the Modern Language Association.  With 35 years of research experience in the Andes, she has written books and articles on Ecuadorian literature as well as a study of Quechua theological translation, Sin and Confession in Colonial Peru (2014).  Her research has been well funded over the years, with awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Dr. Harrison turned to video production to best record her observation of ecological tourism in the Andes, directing Cashing in on Culture: Indigenous Communities and Tourism (2002) as well as filming and directing  Mined to Death in Potosí, Bolivia (2005), winner of a Latin American Studies Association award in film. Her most recent video is Gringo Kullki: From Sucres to Dollars in Ecuador (2015), in the Quichua language with English subtitles.

Dr. Harrison's scholarship reflects her experiences in living abroad: as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Galápagos Islands, as a researcher living with indigenous communities in Ecuador, and as a scholar in the archives and libraries of Lima, Cuzco, and Quito.  She is also an accomplished guide to the Andean region.  She led hiking trips to study archeological sites in the Andes as a professor at Bates College and was director of two semester programs in Ecuador.  Recently, she was appointed director of the University of Maryland semester programs in Madrid and Seville (Spain).  In addition, she has been a visiting professor at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar (Quito) and at the Centro Estudios Regionales Andinos 'Bartolomé de Las Casas' (Cuzco).

Dennis Ogburn

Dennis Ogburn is an archaeologist who specializes in the study of the Inca Empire and other ancient societies in Andean South America. A native of North Carolina, he went west to attend college at Rice University before moving even further west to earn his MA and PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Subsequently, he worked at the Archaeological Research Facility at the University of California, Berkeley, then moved back east, where he is now Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has been active in fieldwork and research in Andean archaeology for over 20 years, leading or participating in work in the southern and northern highlands of Ecuador and in the Cuzco, Ayacucho, and Nasca regions of Peru. His research is at the intersection of science and history, as he employs scientific techniques such as geochemical sourcing and radiocarbon dating in combination with the analysis of historical documents. He has written a number of scholarly works, including articles in prominent journals such as Latin American Antiquity, Ethnohistory, and the Journal of Archaeological Science, and a co-edited volume Foundations of Power in the Prehispanic Andes, published by the American Anthropological Association. Topics of some of those publications include the scope of warfare in the Inca Empire, the long‐distance movement of large building stones in the Inca Empire, and the Inca conquest and occupation of highland Ecuador. In recent and on-going projects, he has been investigating the interpretation of quipus (the Inca writing system), the origins of Inca building stones in the Cuzco region, and the contents of drinking vessels from the Peruvian coast. At UNC Charlotte, he regularly teaches courses in archaeology and related subjects, including South American Archaeology and Ethnohistory of New World Peoples. In addition to a general affinity for old things, his interests include playing guitar, hiking, bicycling, collecting rocks, and learning about native plants and animals.

Bill Sapp

Bill Sapp is an archaeologist with special expertise in the Andes. He has been leading tours for almost two decades and is an expert in the Inca site of Machu Picchu, the Machu Picchu Sanctuary, the Sacred Valley, and other sites in and around Cusco. Bill received his PhD in Anthropology from UCLA, where his dissertation documented his excavations at Cabur, a Lambayeque country palace located on Peru’s north coast. He also excavated at Farfán, a large Lambayeque and Chimú administrative center, and El Algarrobal de Moro, a Chimú administrative site in the Jequetepeque Valley. His primary interests are the late prehispanic polities and the structure and development of their administrative systems. Bill previously served on the Board of Conservation Volunteers International Program, where for a number of years he brought volunteers to Machu Picchu Sanctuary to work with the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of the Environment to maintain and protect the sites and trails within the Sanctuary. Bill currently works as an archaeologist and tribal liaison for the US Forest Service on the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico.

Katryn Wiese

Katryn Wiese is a professor of Geology and Oceanography at City College of San Francisco, where she has taught field, lab, and lecture classes since 1995. She studied Earth and Ocean Sciences at Caltech, Oregon State University, and Stanford University and focused her early research experiences on volcanic processes in Australia, Iceland, and the seafloor. Since then, she has journeyed worldwide as a scientist and field guide, gaining local geologic and oceanographic expertise across the U.S., Central and South America, Arctic and Antarctic locales, and a multitude of ocean island locations including the Azores, the Galapágos Islands, Palau, Tahiti, Fiji, and the Hawaiian Islands. In the classroom, in the field, or through her Earth Rocks! YouTube video channel, Katryn’s primary focus today is helping students of all ages and backgrounds recognize and understand the geologic and oceanographic phenomena that build and modify the landscape and impact our climate and society.

Wayne Ranney

Wayne Ranney is a geologist and writer who is a veteran of expedition travel, having journeyed to and lectured on all of Earth’s seven continents. He is the recipient of the 2018 American Association of Petroleum Geologists “Geosciences in the Media Award” and has received other national and regional honors for his writing, lectures, blog postings, and expeditionary guiding. His foreign and domestic travels have taken him to South America (Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, and the Amazon), Australia and New Zealand, the Polar regions (Antarctica, Iceland, and Greenland), and desert landscapes in Africa, Asia, the Atacama, and the American Southwest.

With a lifelong interest in the earth sciences, Wayne specializes in making the fascinating story of our planet come alive for fellow travelers. He was elected to the Explorers Club and has visited more than 85 countries. Wayne is a retired professor of geology who lives in Flagstaff, Arizona near his beloved Grand Canyon. He is passionate about sharing his vast knowledge of earth history with others in an easy-going and informal style, yet he is a well-respected author of numerous award-winning books and articles. He enjoys languages, hiking, river running, photography, conversation, and anything that allows him to get outdoors with others in seeing the varied and interesting landscapes of our beautiful planet.