Northern Illinois University
Department of Anthropology
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Professor Balco is an anthropological archaeologist and specialist exploring ancient social complexity, focusing particularly on ancient social contact, interaction, entanglement and transformation among ancient Mediterranean and North American cultures. His research focuses on settlement patterns, urbanization, exchange, feasting and past environments in the ancient world. He employs post-colonial perspectives to study and contextualize ancient indigenous lifeways and has conducted field and laboratory research in many loci, including Sicily, the American Midwest, the American Southeast and Central America. He is also interested in public engagement in archaeology and the future of compliance-based archaeological investigations in the United States.

Selected Publications

Balco, W.M. (2023) Feasting Transformed: Commensal Identity Expression and Social Transformation in Iron Age and Archaic Western Sicily. In Adoption, Adaptation and Innovation in Pre-Roman Italy: Paradigms for Cultural Change, edited by Jeremy Armstrong and Aaron Rhodes-Schroder, pp. 221-233. Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, Vol. 3, Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, Belgium.

Balco, W.M. (2023) Negotiating Social Entanglements through Feasting in Iron Age and Archaic Western Sicily. Layers: Archeologia, Territorio, Contesti 8:21-41.

Bigman, D., D. Day and W. Balco (2022) The Roles of Macro- and Micro-Scale Geophysical Investigations to Guide and Monitor Excavations at a Middle Woodland Site in Northern Georgia, USA. Archaeological Prospection 29(2):243-257.

Kolb, M.J. and W.M. Balco (2021) Indigenous Urbanism in Iron Age Western Sicily. In Making Cities: Economies of Production and Urbanization in Mediterranean Europe, 1000-500 BC, edited by Margarita Gleba, Bela Dimova and Beatriz Marin Aguilera, pp. 281-295. McDonald Institute Monograph Series, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK.

Balco, W.M., S.D. Kirk and M.J. Kolb (2020) A Pixelated Landscape Survey in the Forest: Merging Space, Time and Context at Monte Bonifato, Sicily. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 33 (2020): Article 102515.

Balco, W.M., K. Napora, C. Ashby, B. Gerrin, E. House, M. Johnson, M. Mead, A. McCrossin, C. Weaver and L. Williams (2020) A Short Report of Investigations at Rice Farm (9DW276), A Middle Woodland Site in Dawsonville, Georgia: 2019 Field Season. Early Georgia, 48(1-2):5-13.

Noble, E., J. McManus, A. Mead, H. Mead, C. Seminack, W. Balco, T. Bennett, N. Crain, C. Duckworth, T. Malasek, J. Pearson, P. Rhinehart, M. Ussery, Y. Sun, J. Patterson and D. Patterson (2020) Enamel Isotopes Reveal Late Pleistocene Ecosystem Dynamics in Southeastern North America. Quarternary Science Reviews 236(2020): Article 106284.

Kolb, M.J., S.D. Kirk and W.M. Balco (2019) Labor Mobilization and Medieval Castle Construction at Salemi, Western Sicily. In Architectural Energetics in Archaeology: Analytical Expansions and Global Explorations, edited by E.M. Abrams and L. McCurdy, pp. 114-137. Routledge: London and New York.

Balco, W.M. (2018) Thinking Beyond Imitation: Mixed-style Vessels in Ancient Western Sicily. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 31(2):180-202.