Who is Dr. Aksel Casson?

In the Department of Interdisciplinary Programs at Slippery Rock University Dr. Casson is well known for his classes in anthropology and archeology. He serves on the Center for Middle East Studies, the Center for Public Humanities, the International Arts and Culture Series, and directs excavations at the 19th century historic archaeological site at the Old Stone House in Slippery Rock.

Dr. Casson has been at Slippery Rock University since 2011. Casson earned his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Washington with research in luminescence dating as applied to ceramic artifacts from Sinop, Turkey. 

His current research centers on the application of an explicitly evolutionary framework to understanding issues of human behavior ranging from an examination of human adaptations to prehistoric environments to the cultural and political context of social organization in the modern Middle East.

What I want to focus more on is his adventures outside of the Slippery Rock county. He annually takes students to Mexico and even further across the world and sometimes gets him into trouble. For example, when he visted Turkey, Casson got into some trouble with the law and ended up staying a little in a jail cell. But more on that when I interview him.