Jerry D. Moore

About the author

Jerry D. Moore is an archaeologist, writer, editor, and professor emeritus of anthropology at California State University, Dominguez Hills in Carson, CA. Moore has conducted archaeological research in Peru, Mexico, southern California, and Kansas.

Moore's principal expertise focuses on the prehistoric architecture and cultural landscapes in the Andes. He has written the books, "Architecture and Power in the Prehispanic Andes: The Archaeology of Public Buildings" (1996 Cambridge University Press), "Cultural Landscapes in the Prehispanic Andes: Archaeologies of Place" (2005 University Press of Florida), "The Prehistory of Home" (2012, University of California Press, recognized with the 2014 Society for American Archaeology Book Award), "A Prehistory of South America: Ancient Cultural Diversity on the Least-Known Continent" (2014, University Press of Colorado), "Incidence of Travel: Recent Journeys in Ancient South America" (2017, University Press of Colorado). His most recent academic book, "Ancient Andean Houses: Making-Inhabiting-Studying" (University Press of Colorado, 2021) was described by a reviewer in the Hispanic American Historical Review as “an engaging and deeply instructional text that transported me from the Andean highlands to the coast and the rainforest and back, as well as from ancient times to the present.”

Moore is the co-editor with Donald Laylander of "The Prehistory of Baja California: Advances in the Archaeology of the Forgotten Peninsula" (2006 University Press of Florida) selected as a 2007 Choice Distinguished Book.

Moore has written one of the leading textbooks on anthropological theory, "Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists" (2018, 5th edition, Rowman and Littlefield) and he edited a companion collection of primary materials, "Visions of Culture: An Annotated Reader" (2018, 2nd edition, Rowman and Littlefield). Moore's writings have been translated into Spanish, French, Han Chinese, Turkish, and Croatian. Previously, Moore was the editor of "Ñawpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology" and he currently is the editor for the series, “Archaeologies of Landscape in the Americas,” published by the University of New Mexico Press.

Most recently, Moore has written a popular, nonfiction book, Cat Tales: A History, published by Thames & Hudson, which Current Archaeology described as:

Dogs may be ‘man’s best friend’, but cats also share a long relationship with humans – a tale (tail?) that archaeologist Jerry Moore recounts in this absorbing overview, covering two million years of history and an equally broad sweep of geography. It has not always been an amicable relationship – for ancient hominins, ferocious felines were very much predators, not pets, and this book covers tensions between modern communities and wild species, too. Over time, however, cats gradually became useful neighbours (particularly as humans began to cultivate crops and store them in places that attracted rats and mice) and, eventually, cherished companions. In between, they were variously depicted in cave paintings, worshipped as gods, included in burials, hunted for pelts and medicinal ingredients, and employed in entertainment. With more than 70 colour illustrations, a wealth of interesting insights, and an engaging style of delivery, this a purrfect gift for the cat-lover in your life.

Moore has been a Fellow in Precolumbian Studies at Harvard's Dumbarton Oaks Research Libraries and Collections in Washington D.C. (1992-93 and 2017), a senior scholar at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia (1994), a Fellow at the Getty Research Institute (2001-2002), and a Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Durham University, UK (2013).

He lives with his family in Long Beach, California, and provides food service to two cats.