John Wayne Janusek plays bass, collects vintage beer cans, studies the culture and deep history of beer, and teaches courses on urban ecologies. He is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, and is an archaeological anthropologist whose research focuses on Pre-Columbian cities and early complex societies in the South American Andean highlands. He is a specialist in the cultures of Tiwanaku and its predecessors, early civilizations centered in the Lake Titicaca basin of Bolivia and Peru. One of his current projects seeks to elucidate the central roles of stone sculptures at Tiwanaku as animate beings that afforded the Precolumbian city its vital power, as well as their ongoing animacy among contemporary Aymara-speaking communities in Bolivia. The lives of ancient monoliths make for some great storytelling.