Santa Fe Institute's new president, Jeremy A. Sabloff, doesn't think real archaeologists can save the world, even if they brave vipers and scary jungles.

But he thinks they can tell decision makers why past civilizations have succeeded or failed. "We underestimate the skills and intelligence of ancient cultures," he said. "I'm a strong believer in the lessons of history."

Sabloff, 65, took over the helm of the Santa Fe Institute in September. With decades of field research and teaching under his belt, Sabloff is a congenial conversationalist, the kind of guy one can imagine talking long-gone cultures with over a beer.

He's the first social scientist — instead of a physicist, biologist or chemist — to head the institute in its 25-year history.

Sabloff likes studying how cultures develop and helping the public understand why it matters. He writes in his book Archaeology Matters (2008, Left Coast Press) about the benefits of "action archaeology" — archaeologists working for living communities. "No matter how diminished the future might seem to us in today's perilous world, insights derived from archaeological research can help ... bolster the chances of a better future," Sabloff writes.

Sabloff likes SFI's efforts to bring its research to the public. The institute hosts public talks in Santa Fe and stories about its researchers' work appear in popular science magazines such as Nature and Science. The institute hosts an outreach science program for New Mexico high school students called Project GUTS (Growing Up Thinking Scientifically), and last summer started a school for undergraduates on sustainability.

Sabloff's wife, Paula Sabloff, is a cultural anthropologist and SFI research professor who has studied Mongolian attitudes toward democracy and capitalism. "We used to joke that she studies the living and I study the dead," Sabloff said.

Their two children chose different fields — in math and banking.

Sabloff didn't dream of digging in ruins as a child. He believes serendipity played a big part in his career and his life.

At the University of Pennsylvania, he fell in love with anthropology, then earned a National Science Foundation scholarship to research at Harvard University. Gordon Willey, a leading archaeologist, enticed him to Guatemala in 1965 to study the Maya. Sabloff knew French and German, but not Spanish. He studied a Spanish grammar book and Eric Thompson's Rise and Fall of Mayan Civilizations on the flight down.

His interest became "the total culture." "Much of Mayan archaeology traditionally studied the monuments of the rulers," Sabloff said. "So we had a lot of information about the temples, the palaces and aspects of what we think of as the elite Maya civilization."

That was like studying only Park Avenue to figure out how New Yorkers live, Sabloff said.

He studied Mayan settlement patterns — how the artisans, merchants and the peasants lived, and the nature of their trade, economy and politics.

"My interest was what did 98 percent of the population do, not the top 2 percent," Sabloff said.

He spent five seasons in the 1980s helping lead the first major archaeological mapping of an urban Mayan site at Suyil in Mexico's northern Yucatán. Excavations revealed a "garden city," dating from A.D. 750 to about A.D. 1100, where people raised vegetables around the houses and had a sophisticated rainwater catchment system of underground cisterns carved into soft limestone under the houses.

"They collected water in the rainy season for the dry season," Sabloff said.

And it was enough water to sustain a city of several thousand people without wells, pumps or pipes.

Sabloff's interest in the complex whole of culture instead of just parts meshes well with the Santa Fe Institute's agenda, where "we are interested in complex systemic interactions from the level of subatomic particles to human societies. As alien as it might seem to have an archaeologist running SFI, there is a logic to it."

Sabloff was no stranger to Santa Fe or the institute before he was selected president.

He and his family visited Santa Fe often in the 1970s and '80s while he was teaching at The University of New Mexico. He's edited five books published by the School of American Research, based in Santa Fe. The latest is Ancient City: New Perspectives on Urbanism, a book he edited with one of his former students, Joyce Marcus, and published last year. Sabloff served as chairman for the organization. He attended and participated in some of the Santa Fe Institute colloquiums.

In 2004, he retired from his job as director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum and moved to Santa Fe. "Santa Fe seems like a magnet for retiring archaeologists," Sabloff said. "We find it intellectually and scientifically stimulating."

When Geoff West, past SFI president, asked Sabloff if he wanted the position, "It was a no brainer," Sabloff said.

Three months into the job, he found it as "exciting and exhilarating as I had anticipated," he said.

Santa Fe Institute struggled last year to meet its annual $11 million budget. "It has been a tough year, but I think we've turned the corner," Sabloff said. "I am guardedly optimistic."

Sabloff said his main duties as president are ensuring scientists have what they need for their work, providing leadership and of course, finding money.

The institute has made a name for itself by bringing together scientists from completely different fields — like physics and economics — to work together. Sabloff calls it transdisciplinary research. "Some have characterized SFI science as disruptive," Sabloff said. "Our scientists are asking new and difficult questions, mostly why, not just how, something happens."

About 15 resident scientists spend up to five years at the institute. Another 95 external faculty from around the world spend anywhere from two days to a couple of months a year at the Santa Fe Institute.

The institute also hosts a dozen post-doctoral Omidyar fellows who spend two to three years working on projects. "These are some of the best scientific minds in the country and around the world," he said.

EBay founder Pierre Omidyar offered a $7.5 million matching grant in 2008 to fund the postdoctoral program, and the institute is starting the campaign to meet the match.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.