User:Kcowans/Wes Cowan

Wes Cowan

C. Wesley Cowan, born in Louisville, Kentucky, is an internationally recognized expert in Midwestern decorative arts. He has starred in the PBS television series History Detective for nine years, and has been a featured appraiser on Antiques Roadshow for fifteen. He writes an antiques column for the Cincinnati Enquirer and is a frequently requested speaker at antiques events around the country. Wes is licensed as an auctioneer in Ohio, and holds a B.A. and M.A. in anthropology from the University of Kentucky, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan.

After receiving his doctorate degree, Wes taught in the Anthropology department of Ohio State University. In 1984 he moved to Cincinnati to assume the post of curator of archaeology at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History which he held for eleven years. He is published widely in the fields of American archaeology and paleoethnobotany, and is co-editor of The Origins of Agriculture in International Perspective, and Societies in Eclipse: Eastern North America at the Dawn of European Colonization.

In 1995, Wes left academia and the museum world to return to his life-long love, antiques, to found Cowan’s Auctions, Inc. in Cincinnati, Ohio.