Ian Hodder joined the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University in 1999. Among his books are: Symbols in Action: Ethnoarchaeological Studies of Material Culture (1982); Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology (1986, with Scott Hutson); The Domestication of Europe (1990); The Archaeological Process: An Introduction (1999); The Leopard’s Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Çatalhöyük (2006); and Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things (2012).

Hodder has been conducting the excavation of the nine-thousand-year-old Neolithic site of Catalhoyuk in central Turkey since 1993. The twenty-five-year project has three aims: to place the art from the site in its full environmental, economic, and social context; to conserve the paintings, plasters, and mud walls; and to present the site to the public. The project is also associated with attempts to develop reflexive methods in archaeology.