Eiseley eventually returned to the University of Nebraska and received a B.A. degree in English and a B.S. degree in Geology/Anthropology. While at the university, he served as editor of the literary magazine "The Prairie Schooner", and published his poetry and short stories. Undergraduate expeditions to western Nebraska and the southwest to hunt for fossils and human artifacts provided the inspiration for much of his early work. He later noted that he came to anthropology from paleontology, preferring to leave human burial sites undisturbed unless destruction threatened them.