Luther College Anthropology Professor Colin Betts featured in "Lost Nation" films

Luther College Professor of Anthropology Colin Betts will be featured as a scholar in films two and three of the film series "Lost Nation," which will air on PBS stations in the Midwest later this year. Betts was featured prominently in the first film "Lost Nation: The Ioway," a documentary that won awards at numerous film festivals and went on to screen more than 100 times throughout the United States.

Betts joined the Luther faculty in 1999 as an instructor of anthropology, he was promoted to assistant professor later that same year and currently serves as a full professor on the anthropology faculty. A graduate of Luther, Betts holds the master's and doctoral degrees in anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a member of the Plain Anthropological Society, Society for American Archaeology and Iowa Archaeological Society.

His expertise lies in prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology of the Upper Mississippi River Valley, ceramics, material culture, technology, ethnicity and identity and ethnoarchaeology. Betts is the author of several scholarly articles, educational materials and a book chapter. He has participated in more than a dozen archaeological investigation sites, serving as principal investigator on more than half of them.
 
Photo: Iowa Tribe of Kansas & Nebraska Chief James White Cloud holding a child. James is the grandson of White Cloud the Elder (Mahaska).