Jan Simek

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Jan F. Simek (born April 15, 1953) is an American archaeologist and educator who spent much of his career at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He joined UT Knoxville in 1984 as a faculty member in the anthropology department and later became a distinguished professor. He has held several leadership roles, including department head of anthropology, interim director of the School of Art, interim dean of Architecture and Design, and chief of staff to the chancellor (2005–2008). He served as interim chancellor of UT Knoxville (2008–2009) and then as interim president of the University of Tennessee system (2009–2010).

Simek’s research covers Paleolithic archaeology, human evolution, quantitative and spatial analysis, and the archaeology of the southeastern United States, with a focus on cave art. He helped discover and study numerous unnamed caves in the Cumberland Plateau to protect their locations and has documented prehistoric artwork found there. He also conducted important Neanderthal research in France, including work at Grotte XVI that suggested Neanderthals used fire in complex ways and may have smoked fish.

Education and work outside UT include a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz (1976) and an MA (1978) and PhD (1984) from the State University of New York at Binghamton. He has taught and conducted research in France, Italy, Croatia, California, and Tennessee, and has been a visiting scholar at the University of Washington, the University of Bordeaux, and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. In 1996 he founded the Cave Archaeology Research Team at UT, which has mapped thousands of artifacts from caves in the region. Some cave art is linked to Mississippian, Woodland, and Archaic periods, with Third Unnamed Cave yielding more than 15,000 artifacts and shedding light on Southeast cave art. Simek grew up in California; his mother, Susan Tours Simek, served in the Navy during World War II, and his father, Vasek Simek, was a Czech-born theater director and actor.