Izumi Shimada (島田泉) is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (SIUC) and 2007 Outstanding Scholar with research interests in the archaeology of complex pre-Hispanic cultures in the Andes including Inca civilization, the technology and organization of craft production, mortuary analysis, experimental archaeology, the role of ideology and organized religion in cultural developments, and ecology-culture interaction.
Born in Kyoto, Japan in 1948, Shimada moved at the age of 16 with his parents to the U.S. in 1964. He majored in anthropology at Cornell (B.A. 1971) where he became interested in the ancient Andean civilization and experimental archaeology under tutelage of Prof. John V. Murra and Robert Ascher, respectively. Two seasons (1973, 1975) of archaeological fieldwork at the Moche city of Pampa Grande (c. AD 600–750) on the northern coast of Peru led to his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1976.
