Mesoamerica

"City Life at Classic Maya Palenque, Mexico" is a Collaborative Research project with primary funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Palenque, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Chiapas, Mexico, is well-known for its important role in the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing. Previous work there on the temples and residence of the ruling family have produced one of the best-understood case studies of the development of a Classic Maya state during the Late Classic Period (approximately 600-800 AD). Less is known about life outside of the precincts of the ruling family.

Summer 2022 saw the long-delayed start of the NEH-funded project, "City life at Classic Maya Palenque, Mexico", a collaboration between UC Berkeley Professor Rosemary A. Joyce, Universidad Autonoma de México Professor Rodrigo Liendo, UNLV Assistant Professor Lisa Johnson, and Sapienza University of Roma Marie Curie Fellow Arianna Campiani. The team began excavations using fine-grained methodologies to explore household life in the residential sector of this World Heritage Site, the first systematic effort to understand urban organization and growth there.

My research investigates the human-environmental interactions of Prehispanic peoples in the Arenal region of Costa Rica. This area is an ideal location to look at resilient practices in the past, since domestic settlements in Arenal persevered through powerful volcanic eruptions that impacted the landscape every few centuries.