SPEAKER:

Dr. Richard Hansen

Adjunct Professor

Department of Anthropology

University of Utah

ABSTRACT:

Excavations over four decades in the Mirador Basin have revealed perspectives of the origins, dynamics, and demographic collapse of the Preclassic Maya societies that flourished in northern Guatemala and southern Campeche, Mexico.  The identifications of the social, political, and economic catalysts that created the cultural complexities in the Maya Lowlands have allowed new explanatory models responsible for the rise of cultural complexity during the Middle and Late Preclassic periods of Maya civilization (1000 BC-A.D. 150).  Mapping and excavations in 51 ancient cities of various sizes throughout the entirety of the Basin have also revealed the ideological, logistical and economic dynamics that created a homogeneous society that merged to form one of the earliest state level societies in the Western Hemisphere. Yet, even in light of the economic, political, and ideological complexities of the Preclassic Maya in the Mirador Basin, a series of multicausal factors contributed to the long term demographic collapse of civilization in the area.  The synthesis of the entire panorama of cultural process in the Mirador Basin provides new understandings of the saga of humanity found in emergent Maya civilization that is now being revealed for the first time.

SPEAKER:

James E. Snead

Professor

Department of Anthropology

Cal State Northridge

ABSTACT:

 Historical archaeology in the western United States has traditionally focused on either the colonial-era "missions" or 19th century mining sites in remote locations.  Recently, however, historical archaeology itself has undergone a major conceptual shift, emphasizing the ways that the study of material culture can shed light on a wide range of historical topics dating to relatively recent times. These often bear on contemporary social issues, including ethnicity, identity, labor, and heritage.  The diverse communities of Los Angeles present a remarkable template for such research: this talk will describe current scholarship at CSUN focusing on specific "lost narratives" of the city's post-1850s inhabitants as examined through archaeology. Particular emphasis will be placed on the dynamics of "community engagement" that are the organizational center of these efforts.

SPEAKER:

Dr. Claudia Moser

Associate Professor

Dept. of History of Art & Architecture

UC Santa Barbara

ABSTRACT:

This talk explores what we can learn about Roman Republican sacrifice through the study of the material remains of sacrifice and the architectural settings in which the ritual occurs. I will argue that by examining the material record of sacrifice --the aniconic altars of the Republican period, their relations to the natural and built landscape, and the accompanying archaeological evidence of the ritual --we can form a comprehensive view of the procedure of sacrificial ritual, detailing aspects of the practice that might be absent from or inconsistent with what is found in images or texts. In this talk, I will integrate various types of evidence (topographic and architectural evidence, zooarchaeological material, and votive crafted goods) to reveal a sacrifice that is intricately linked to the sanctuary in which it is enacted, a sacrifice that is local and site-specific.

SPEAKER:

Dr. Arlen F. Chase

Visiting Professor

Dept. of Anthropology

Pomona College

ABSTRACT:

Perceptions about the ancient Maya have changed significantly in the last decade with the advent of new technologies and as a result of continuous dedicated research that seeks to define their social and political organization. With its ability to penetrate dense tropical canopies, LiDAR has revolutionized the field of Mesoamerican settlement archaeology. Because dense vegetation covers most ancient remains in the Maya area, archaeological documentation of the spatial extent of sites using traditional means was both difficult and usually incomplete. LiDAR was initially applied to the site of Caracol, Belize in April 2009 and yielded a 200 sqkm Digital Elevation Model that, for the first time, provided a complete view of how the archaeological remains from a single Maya site –its monumental architecture, roads, residential settlement, and agricultural terraces –were distributed over the landscape. In May 2013, an additional 1057 sqkm of LiDAR data were recorded in west-central Belize. For the site of Caracol, these LiDAR data may be combined with 35 years of continuous archaeological research and excavation to formulate temporal parameters and guide social and political interpretations. The conjoined information derived from LiDAR and archaeological research is significantly changing our perceptions of ancient Maya civilization by demonstrating the anthropogenic changes made to landscapes, the scale of Maya urban settlements, and the socially complex situations that existed within and between Maya polities.