Tom Rocek received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1985, was a Fellow at the School of American Research (now School of Advanced Research) in Santa Fe in 1985-1986, and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Oregon State University in 1986-1987, before joining the faculty at the University of Delaware. 

Rocek has studied historical Navajo settlements on the Navajo Nation, resulting in Navajo Multi-Household Social Units: Archaeology on Black Mesa, Arizona (University of Arizona Press, 1995) and Formative through Late Prehistoric research in New Mexico, particularly within the Jornada branch of the Mogollon archaeological culture, resulting in The Henderson Site Burials: Glimpses of a Late Prehistoric Population in the Pecos Valley, co-authored with John Speth (University of Michigan Press, 1986) and Diversity on the Edge of the Southwest: Late Hunter-gatherers and Farmers of the Jornada Mogollon, co-edited with Nancy Kenmotsu (University of Colorado Press, 2019). A book on The Dunlap-Salazar Site is in preparation. 

Rocek's research interests include middle-range societies, agricultural origins, mobility and sedentism, quantitative analysis, and particularly comparative approaches to archaeological analysis. With Ofer Bar-Yosef, he is the co-editor of Seasonality and Sedentism: Archaeological Perspectives from Old and New World Sites (Harvard University, 1998). Most recently, these comparative interests have included both the Formative period in the Southwestern United States and the Neolithic period in the Czech Republic. 

Rocek is a member of the Society for American Archaeology, the American Anthropological Association, the European Association of Archaeologists, the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society and the Archaeological Society of New Mexico, and co-editor of Kiva, the Journal of the Arizona Anthropological and Historical Society. ​