Kari Schleher (Ph.D. University of New Mexico, 2010) is the Curator of Archaeology at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. Kari’s first experience at Crow Canyon was as a field research intern at Shields Pueblo in 1999. She worked in the lab at Crow Canyon from 2011 through 2020 as the Laboratory Analysis Manager and then the Laboratory Manager. She incorporates data from Crow Canyon projects in her research on pottery in the Ancestral Pueblo world.

Kari’s research interests include the archaeology of the southwest US and especially the history of Ancestral Pueblo communities in New Mexico and Colorado. Her major focus is on studies of material culture, especially pottery, and what these artifacts can teach us about what life was like the past. She is especially interested in using scientific studies of materials and methods used to make pottery to better understand choices made by potters in the past. Over the past 20 years, she’s worked on archaeological projects, both in the field and in the lab, from across the southwest, with an emphasis on the north central Rio Grande region of New Mexico and the Mesa Verde region of southwest Colorado.