Anna Curtenius Roosevelt

In 1991, Roosevelt published, Moundbuilders of the Amazon: Geophysical Archaeology on Marajo Island, Brazil, which detailed her work throughout the 1980s on pre-Columbian Marajoara culture. Her research team employed remote sensing geophysical surveys, together with excavation. The Marajo Island lies near the mouth of the Amazon River and contains evidence of pre-Columbian settlement.

From 1990 to 1992, Roosevelt led the excavation of the Painted Rock Cave (Caverna da Pedra Pintada) near Monte Alegre in the State of Pará, Brazil. The Monte Alegre rock art contains many examples of ancient rock paintings, including handprints, as well as human and animal figures and geometrics. Dating of these paintings suggests they are among the oldest art in the Western Hemisphere. Roosevelt's investigation found evidence for human habitation in the Amazon much older than previously known, perhaps twice as old.

Roosevelt has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has been awarded the Explorers Medal and the Society of Woman Geographers' Gold Medal. Brazil has awarded her the Order of Rio Branco and the Bettendorf Medal. In 1988, she received a five-year fellowship from the MacArthur Fellows Program. She has received honorary doctorates from Mount Holyoke and Northeastern University. In 2012 She received the University Scholar and Distinguished Professor awards from University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Commission, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the University of Illinois.

From 1975 to 1985, she worked as a curator at the Museum of the American Indian. Roosevelt was a guest curator at the American Museum of Natural History from 1985 to 1989. She was later a curator of archaeology at the Field Museum of Natural History. Her early field work took her to the Andes mountains of Peru, and then to Mexico and Venezuela. She is currently a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Roosevelt recalls that, inspired by her mother, through reading and a trip to Mesa Verde, she became interested in archaeology at the age of nine. She graduated from Stanford University in 1968 with a Bachelor of Arts in History, Classics, and Anthropology. In 1977, she earned a Ph.D. degree in anthropology from Columbia University.

Anna Curtenius Roosevelt (born 1946) is an American archaeologist and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago. She studies human evolution and long-term human-environment interaction. She is one of the leading American archeologists studying Paleoindians in the Amazon basin. Her field research has included significant findings at Marajo Island and Caverna da Pedra Pintada in Brazil. She does additional field work in the Congo Basin. She is the great-granddaughter of United States President Theodore Roosevelt.