WILLIAM S. AYRES

Director, Pacific Islands Studies; Professor and Head, Department of Anthropology

Pacific Islands Focus
Phone: (541) 346-5119
email: wsayres@uoregon.edu

William Ayres specializes in archaeology, prehistoric architecture and settlement patterns, and the ethnology of Oceania and Southeast Asia. He has done fieldwork in Pohnpei, Micronesia, Thailand, American Samoa, and Easter Island. Among his publications are Geiseler's Easter Island: An 1880's Anthropological Account of Rapa Nui (University of Hawaii, 1995); Mystery Islets of Micronesia, Archeology (Jan.Feb. 1990); and Prehistoric Food Production in Micronesia in Pacific Production Systems: Approaches to Economic Prehistory (Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1990). Dr. Ayres was a Fulbright Scholar in Thailand, held a 3-year research grant for Pohnpei archaeology from the National Endowment of the Humanities, and recently received a Smithsonian Institution Fellowship. In 1993, he served as a UNESCO consultant for archaeological conservation on Easter Island.