John O'Shea

John O'Shea is the Emerson F. Greenman Collegiate Professor of Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Michigan and Curator of Great Lakes Archaeology at the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology. He holds affiliations with the Department of Anthropology, Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies (CREES), and Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia. His research focuses on Old World archaeology with emphases in Hungary and Romania, alongside investigations into Great Lakes prehistory and underwater archaeology.

Dr. O'Shea earned a B.A. from the University of Nebraska (1974), a Diploma from Oxford University (1975), and a Ph.D. in Archaeology from Cambridge University (1978). His work combines field archaeology with paleoenvironmental reconstruction and ethnographic insights, particularly regarding prehistoric hunting strategies and submerged cultural landscapes.

• Notable contributions include discovering a 9,000-year-old caribou hunting structure beneath Lake Huron
• Explored shipwrecks along the Lake Huron coastline and Saginaw County archaeological sites
• Recipient of the Emerson F. Greenman Collegiate Professorship (2013) and American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership (2012)

His research bridges terrestrial and underwater archaeology, integrating environmental data with cultural analysis to reconstruct ancient human-environment interactions. Publications span monographs on Great Lakes prehistory and methodological studies in maritime archaeology.