Under the direction of Dr. James Hill, Professor of Anthropology at UCLA, MS Lisa Lucero will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. As part of a larger long term project she will conduct archaeological excavation in the upper Belize River area in Belize. The focus of her work will be the late Maya period (ca. 600-900 AD) which represents the highest level of integration in the region. She will excavate a series of four domestic compounds divided between upland and lowland regions and high, medium and low status groups. Sites will be cored to locate activity areas and on this basis large horizontal excavation will be conducted. The recovered remains - mostly ceramics - will then be studied to determine their function, the amount of work required to produce them, and whether they were made at the site or imported from elsewhere. With this data it should then be possible to compare compounds on the basis of economic and social organization. Work in the Mayan area has shown that domestic units formed descrete groups and provided the basic building blocks of society. While much work has been done on elite groups very little is known about their lower class counterparts. Also it is not understood how these units were integrated to form the larger functioning society. Was, for example, production specialized by class and did exchange across class lines strengthen societial bonds? By examining a series of compounds which cross both geographic and status grounds, MS Lucero will be able to examine such issues. This research is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to a large number of archaeologists. It will increase our understanding of how one of the great New World prehistoric civilizations developed and was maintained and it will assist in the training of a promising young scientist.
