Penelope Dransart is an anthropologist, archaeologist, and historian specialising in South American anthropology and the study of castles. Until 2016 she was a Reader at University of Wales Trinity Saint David. She is Honorary Reader at the University of Aberdeen. Dransart was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1998. She has written or edited several books, including Earth, Water, Fleece and Fabric: An Ethnography and Archaeology of Andean Camelid Herding.