He received his Ph.D. in anthropology in 2014 from The University of Arizona and was a postdoc at the Universities of Maryland and Wyoming before joining UC Davis in 2017. His research explores how complex human behaviors such food production, cooperation, and hierarchical organization evolved in ancient human societies. His excavations and laboratory work focus on hunter-gatherer societies living more than 5000 years ago above 12,000 feet above sea level in the Andean highlands of Peru where potato and quinoa agriculture, alpaca husbandry, and state-organized societies evolved from foraging lifeways.