Jo Anne Van Tilburg was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, graduated from the University of Minnesota, and holds a M.Ed. and Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the director of the UCLA Rock Art Archive (1997 to the present). She has served two appointed terms on the U.S. National Park System Advisory Board Landmarks Committee and, in 2001, received the California Governor’s Award for Historic Preservation for rock art research at Little Lake Ranch, Rose Valley, Inyo County, California. The resultant publication is Rock Art at Little Lake: An Ancient Crossroads in the California Desert (Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2014). 

Her research interests are the structural analysis of chiefdoms, the integration of symbolism and structure and the interactive cultural roles of art, history, and ecology in island societies.