John Bertram Broster (born 17 May 1945) is an American archaeologist formerly serving as the Prehistoric Archeological Supervisor at the Tennessee Division of Archaeology, Department of Environment and Conservation.

[1][2] He is best known for his work on the Paleoindian period of the American Southwest and Southeast, and has published some 38 book chapters and journal articles on the subject.

Broster currently lives in the Nashville, Tennessee area with his wife, Diane Gusky.

John has had an interest in archaeology all his life, and for this reason Broster has been quoted saying, "My work is my hobby".

Broster began his undergraduate career in Tennessee and attended the George Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University.

Upon completion of his undergraduate degree in the spring of 1968, John enrolled as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico and started there in the fall of 1968.

Focusing on paleoindian studies, John spent several years in New Mexico alongside his friend and colleague, Dennis Stanford and completed his master's degree in 1971.

John continued his studies at the University of New Mexico until 1973, when he began working for the Tennessee Division of Archaeology.

[3] The field seasons of 1966 and 1967 that John attended consisted of survey work, and he returned two years later in 1970 to participate in excavations.

at New Mexico, Lewis Binford had arranged for Broster and other graduate students to attend a field season with Robert Whallon[4] at a Mesolithic site in the Netherlands in 1973.

In the summer of 1973, Broster took a job with his colleague; Dennis Stanford-who was then working at the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1977, Broster left the OCA and was hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Forestry Department[7] as the field director in 1978.

Broster was later promoted to the archaeological program director, where he oversaw a series of surveys on a multitude of Native American reservations.

In the latter half of 1984 until early 1985, Broster worked for and helped operate the Cultural Resources Management Company, "San Juan Basin Archeological Consultants", with Stephen Lentz, Bradley Vierra and John Ackland.

[1] It was Broster's job, and the responsibility of the division to survey, excavate, and preserve prehistoric and historic sites in Tennessee, as well as research and publish on their findings in popular and scientific formats.

[1] Broster and his colleagues have practiced a "systematic approach"[8] to recording Paleoindian projectile points at each site they've worked on since the late 1980s.

Broster and his colleagues have contributed a great deal of information to the University of Tennessee's Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA).

Some of these key sites and excavations include… Broster and his colleagues have been heavily involved in archaeological research along the Cumberland River and in the Kentucky Lake Region of Tennessee.

[11] In addition, both of these sites seem to support a southern beginning for the fluted clovis point tradition, in that they seem to resemble the tool kit used in the western United States.

[15] The standard deviations for these early dates from Johnson are significant, in two cases exceeding 900 years.

Both the Johnson and Carson-Conn-Short sites proved essential in furthering the study of Paleoindian history of the southeast, and dating of these sites is critical in understanding the origins of Clovis culture, and how and when it spread across the United States.

Though the majority of John Broster's archeological career has been based more or less in government office rather than in strict academia, he has produced some 50 publications over the last 40 years.

In Paleoindian and Early Archaic Period Research in the Lower Southeast: A South Carolina Perspective, edited by D. G. Anderson, K. E. Sassaman, and C. Judge, pp. 263–68.