Waters' professional interests focus on geoarchaeology, peopling of the Americas, late Quaternary history and late prehistoric human-land interaction.

His current research projects include geoarchaeological and archaeological investigations of

• the Gault Clovis site in Texas;
• the Topper "Pre-Clovis" site in South Carolina;
• the Ushki Lake Upper Paleolithic sites in Kamchatka, Russia; and
• the Gila River Indian Reservation in Arizona.