Edward Swenson is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Director of the Archaeology Centre at the University of Toronto. Swenson has conducted archaeological research in the Jequetepeque Valley on the North Coast of Peru and in Cambodia as member of the Yaśodharāśramas Archaeological Project. Swenson has published extensively, and his theoretical interests include the pre-industrial city, the rise of social inequality, the archaeology of ritual and ideology, violence and religion, materiality theory, place-making and ancient infrastructures, the archaeology of time and landscape, semiotics, and the politics of spatial experience and social memory.