Michael J. Kolb

Michael J. Kolb (born c. 1960s) is an American anthropologist. He currently holds the position of Professor and Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence at Metropolitan State University of Denver and Presidential Teaching Professor Emeritus at Northern Illinois University, where he also served as Associate Vice Provost.

Kolb received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1991. Kolb has done field work in Polynesia, Europe, and Africa. Most of his recent contributions have been in the area of "social stratification and the political economy of the Maui Kingdom in Hawaii, and the rise of complexity in early Iron Age Sicily."

At MSU Denver Kolb teaches courses in archaeology as well as in "field methods, ethnohistory, quantitative analysis, and method and theory."

Kolb is the currently director of the Na Heiau O Maui, NIU's archaeological field school in Hawaii for student research, and international co-director of the Elymi Project, which aims to "describe human landscape transformations around three hilltop settlements" in western Sicily.

Kolb discovered what may be a medieval mosque in Sicily while investigating the Norman castle of Salemi. Kolb has also conducted an extensive study of ancient Maui temples published in Current Anthropology which suggested that the temple system was 400 years older than previously thought.