Alice Yao (University of Chicago)

Alice Yao is an anthropological archaeologist who received her PhD from the Museum of Anthropology of the University of Michigan in 2008. An associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, she is the author of "The Ancient Highlands of Southwest China: An Archaeological History from the Bronze Age to the Han Empire" (Oxford University Press) and the forthcoming monograph, “Archaeologies of the Han Empire” (Cambridge University Press), co-authored with Wengcheong Lam. Her fieldwork uses material and paleoenvironmental records to examine Bronze Age political systems in Yunnan, early foundations of the Southern Silk Roads, and Han colonial expansion.