Brendan J. M. Weaver is an historical anthropologist who examines colonialism in the Americas. He is particularly interested in how European, African, and indigenous peoples have engaged in the processes of transculturation, leading to new power relations and political economies, which continue to have a bearing on contemporary ideas of identity. Brendan graduated from Western Michigan University (WMU) in 2005 with a B.A. in Anthropology, specializing in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. While earning his B.A., Brendan worked for three field seasons in Barbados studying both British colonialism and the archaeology of the pre-Columbian peoples of the southeastern Caribbean.

In 2008, Brendan received an M.A. in Anthropology with a certificate in Ethnohistory, also from WMU. His master’s thesis titled, Ferro Ingenio: An Archaeological and Ethnohistorical View of Labor and Empire in Colonial Porco and Potosí (DOWNLOAD), concerns two seasons of archaeological fieldwork and ethnohistorical investigation at an early colonial silver mining and processing site in southern Andean Bolivia. Currently, Brendan is a doctoral student in anthropology at Vanderbilt University. He is continuing to conduct historical archaeology in the Andes and remains interested in public anthropology and issues concerning labor and power. When Brendan is not researching he can often be found playing his mandolin.