He doesn't want people to view his move to Brown as merely a jump to a prestigious university. " It's quite the opposite," he says.

What attracted Houston to Brown was its Ph.D. program in archaeology, something BYU does not have. "I would like a chance to get back to work with high-level students that I'm training directly," Houston says. "We have used Ph.D. level students, but they've always been from other universities."

Another factor is the chance to get back closer to his roots. Houston met his wife while they were graduate students at Yale University, and both of their families still live in the East.

Houston admits his departure is filled with mixed emotions. "I'm leaving with a lot of regrets because BYU has been a very friendly and welcoming place," he says. "In all candor, it's one of the best places I've seen for supporting research."

Houston goes so far as to credit BYU for reviving his career.

In the early 1990s, while Houston was teaching at Vanderbilt University in Knoxville, Tenn., he was on the verge of quitting archaeology altogether because the chair of the department made life so unpleasant for him. "I did not have a good time there," Houston says bluntly. While on a ski trip to Utah, where his cousin operates a lodge, Houston fell in love with the mountains. He had become acquainted with researchers at BYU through his work in Guatemala, and they were surprised when they learned he would be willing to relocate to Provo. One thing led to another and he was eventually hired. Because he is not LDS, Houston "had to jump through a lot of hoops LDS professors don't have to," Nancy Houston said. "They wanted to make sure he was someone who was compatible with the university." BYU administrators soon learned that he was.

Houston says he was "pre-adapted" to life at BYU, which requires both students and professors to abide by a strict honor code.

"He wasn't a drinker or a smoker," Nancy Houston says. "As I say to my friends, give me Mormon values any day," Stephen Houston says. "Coming here has been a breath of fresh air. I've been in two contexts — the worst possible context for an academic, and here, in my opinion, it's been the best. There are friendly colleagues and a huge amount of support. I've been in situations where there's nothing but a lot of misery." "I regard it as a godsend for the opportunity to come here for 10 years," Houston said. "It opened my eyes as to how a university should function. Most universities are very competitive intellectually, which is a good thing. But there are other values that we should be reinforcing or strengthening. One of which is honesty and upright behavior.