He explores the ancient Southwest

Steve Lekson, who studies ancient people of the desert Southwest, has received the 2011 distinguished explorer award from the Roy Chapman Andrews Society in Beloit. 
Lekson is curator of anthropology at the Colorado Museum of Natural History and is called "perhaps the best writer in Southwestern Archeology" in a New York Times profile.
 The blurb on the back cover of Lekson's "History of the Ancient Southwest" says, "While many ... would have us believe that nothing much ever happened in the ancient Southwest, this book argues that the region experienced rises and falls, kings and commoners, war and peace, triumphs and failures."