Stephen M. Perkins

Dr. Stephen M. Perkins joined OSU’s Department of Sociology in 2002. His current research centers on North American archaeology and ethnohistorical investigations of Indigenous societies. His teaching focuses on undergraduate education. Additionally, Perkins remains committed to the public dissemination of his research for the benefit of nonspecialist audiences.

Perkins earned a PhD in the Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University. For his doctoral degree he conducted a year of research in Mexico funded by a Fulbright fellowship and a Wenner-Gren Foundation grant. Utilizing Spanish colonial documents in national, state, and municipal archives, he investigated the triangulated conflict between Spaniards, Indigenous Nahua nobles and Nahua commoners over control of land, water, and municipal politics between the 16th to 18th centuries. His undergraduate courses at OSU reflect his training in Mesoamerican ethnohistory and ethnography, most especially ANTH 3443: Peoples of Mesoamerica and ANTH 4223: The Aztec Empire.

Since arriving at OSU, he has collaborated with colleagues from OU and the Oklahoma Archeological Survey to investigate colonial-era fortified Wichita trading village sites across Oklahoma. This research has involved numerous undergraduate field schools (ANTH 3990: Fieldwork in Anthropology) where students learn archaeological excavation methods in the recovery of material evidence of Wichita life from the 15th to 18th centuries. In addition to peer-reviewed journal articles, he is a co-author of The Deer Creek Site: An eighteenth-century fortified Wichita village on the American Southern Great Plains (2024; London: BAR Publishing). At present he is working with colleagues on a monograph concerning a 15th-century fortified trade camp in western Oklahoma where the Wichita seasonally processed bison hides for use and trade with affiliated groups further west, including Apache groups occupying the Texas panhandle.

In addition to his research, teaching, and public outreach, Perkins has actively served on committees in the Sociology Department, including as past chair of the undergraduate and graduate committees. Currently, he serves as an appointed member of the Oklahoma Archeological Survey's Citizens's Advisory Board; as the elected chair of OSU’s Faculty Council (2025-2026); and as an elected member of the Plains Anthropological Society Board of Directors (2025-2027).

Research:

Anthropology; ethnohistory & historical anthropology; archaeology; political economy & anarchy theories; borderlands; Great Plains; Mesoamerica