Radoslaw (Radek) Palonka (Ph.D. Jagiellonian University, 2009) is an assistant professor at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. He has appointments in the Department of American Archaeology, the Institute of Archaeology, and the Faculty of History. Radoslaw began worked with the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center on the Goodman Point Archaeological Project in 2005 and 2006. He returned to Crow Canyon to work on his doctoral dissertation in 2009. From 2011 to the present he has directed the Sand Canyon-Castle Rock Community Archaeological Project, in collaboration with the Bureau of Land Management Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, and the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office.

Radoslaw conducts research in Poland and in the Mesa Verde Region of the southwestern United States. His research in the Mesa Verde region focuses on the Sand Canyon locality, specifically the community of sites surrounding Castle Rock Pueblo in lower Sand Canyon. His research builds on Crow Canyon’s research in the Sand Canyon locality and the Center’s excavations at Castle Rock Pueblo. Today the lower Sand Canyon area is part of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, which is the most heavily visited area within the monument. Between 2011 and 2017 Radoslaw’s project has examined about 40 sites, documenting architecture, collecting tree-ring samples, recording rock art, and analyzing artifact assemblages. His research includes electrical resistance survey, ground penetrating radar, and magnetometer surveys to locate buried structures. Radoslaw’s research examines settlement structure and the socio-cultural changes during the thirteenth century and it provides a baseline for monitoring visitor impacts to these archaeological sites.