 After working for the Illinois State Museum and Michigan’s museum of anthropology from 1984-88, Pauketat earned his PhD in Anthropology in 1991 from the University of Michigan.Pauketat did post-doctoral work at the University of Illinois as a visiting researcher, and in 1992 started as an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma at Norman.During this period, he published his first single-authored book, "The Ascent of Chiefs