P.J. Capelotti

Historical archaeologist and writer P.J. Capelotti, Professor emeritus of Anthropology at Penn State University, has explored across the Arctic and along the American roadside for half a century.

He is author or editor of more than a two dozen non-fiction histories, including Our Man in the Crimea (1991); Explorers Air Yacht (1996); By Airship to the North Pole: an archaeology of human exploration (1999); Sea Drift: Rafting Adventures in the Wake of Kon-Tiki (2001); Life and Death on the Greenland Patrol (2005); The Whaling Expedition of the Ulysses (2010); Shipwreck at Cape Flora: The expeditions of Benjamin Leigh Smith, England's forgotten Arctic explorer, (2013); and The Greatest Show in the Arctic: the American exploration of Franz Josef Land, 1898-1905 (2016).

A collection of essays covering his first 25 years of fieldwork appeared in 2018 as: Adventures in Archaeology: The Last Logbook of the Orca II.

His international collaboration with Grenna Museum in Sweden was published in 2021 as: The Coldest Coast: the 1873 Leigh Smith expedition to Svalbard in the diaries and photographs of Herbert C. Chermside.

His book: Your Sheep Are All Counted: a roadside archaeology of South of the Border billboards, was published in 2022.

His theory of archaeological research in space: The Human Archaeology of Space, was published in 2010 and he is currently at work on an underwater analog sequel mission.

His novel: Nautilus: a modern sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, was described by Clive Cussler as "an amazing tale filled with enigmas filled with riddles and dark mysteries. Truly a fascinating read." Nautilus was published in August, 2015, under the pen name Pete Shaw.