Tim Kohler applies method and theory from the study of complex adaptive systems to the study of prehistoric societies. Trained in the archaeology of the US Southeast, he is Regents Professor of Archaeology and Evolutionary Anthropology at Washington State University in Pullman, and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.

Kohler now works primarily on the archaeology of the US Southwest while retaining interests in farming societies all over the world. Major excavation projects include the Dolores Archaeological Program and the Bandelier Archaeological Excavation Project. For over a decade he coordinated the interdisciplinary Village Ecodynamics Project to understand the causes for changes in settlement systems, inequality, and violence in the eastern Southwest between 600 and 1760 CE. He is a Research Associate at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez and a member of their Board of Trustees.

He is especially interested in cooperative behavior, wealth inequalities and their consequences, and other processes with evolutionary implications in Neolithic societies. Recent work on large-scale patterning in prehistoric societies has resulted in such diverse publications as “Future of the human climate niche” (PNAS 2020) and “Scale and information-processing thresholds in Holocene social evolution” (Nature Communications 2020).

In 2010 he was recognized by the Society for American Archaeology with its Award for Excellence in Archaeological Analysis, and in 2014 the American Anthropological Association honored him with its Alfred Vincent Kidder Award for Eminence in American Archaeology. In Fall 2019 he served as an Invited Scholar at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto.