Olsen has published 10 books (and close to 160 scientific papers), including Archaeology: The Discipline of Things (2012 with Michael Shanks (archaeologist), Timothy Webmoor and Christopher Witmore), In Defense of Things. Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects (2010), and Persistent memories: Pyramiden – a Soviet mining town in the High Arctic (2010, with Elin Andreassen and Hein Bjerck; see Pyramiden) .
Pyramiden, an abandoned Russian coal mining community on Svalbard, Norway