Research

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Left: total exhaustion, atop a jungle-clad pyramid,
Yucatan, Mexico, July 15, 2005

My primary research, about the Maya culture, is in two areas.

The first, EAAMS, is the Electronic Atlas of Ancient Maya Sites. My colleague Dr. Clifford T. Brown of Florida Atlantic University and I maintain a comprehensive computer database, within a geographic information system, of information about 4,800 ancient Maya archaeological sites.

This work has its own web site: http://MayaGIS.SMV.org.

The second area of research, the basis of my dissertation, is about Muyil, a small ancient Maya site on the east coast of Yucatan, about 90 miles south of Cancun, and 12 miles south of Tulum.

This work also has its own web site: http://Muyil.SMV.org.

Archaeology projects in the field:

Investigación Arqueológica del Centro del Estado de Yucatán (Clifford T. Brown & Carlos Peraza L.)

for tests of survey techniques, data gathering equipment, and field mapping aids, and the location of some two dozen new Maya sites as a test of the Electronic Atlas of Ancient Maya Sites, and implications drawn for settlement pattern density. 2005-2006.

Electronic Atlas of Ancient Maya Sites (co-PI with Clifford T. Brown)

Five-mile Lock, James River & Kanawha Canal, Richmond, Virginia

Project Director

Cactus Hill, Nottoway River, Virginia

visiting Field Crew

Muyil (Chunyaxché), Quintana Roo, Mexico

Project Director, survey, mapping, settlement pattern studies, excavations, ceramic analysis, ecological reconnaissance; Tulane University's Middle American Research Institute and the Quintana Roo Regional Center of the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History.

Field research May - June 1987 (professional staff of 4, plus 12 laborers);

May - June 1988 (professional staff of 7, plus 24 laborers);

January-May 1990 (professional staff of 5, plus 15 laborers)

August 1991 (professional staff of 2).

Jean Lafitte National Park, New Orleans, Louisiana

Survey party chief, eight colonial house sites. January 1990

Ek Balam, Yucatan, Mexico

Survey party chief, mapping, excavation crew chief. (Project Director - William R. Ringle.) May - June 1986.

(un-named) Coles Creek site, Louisiana

Survey party chief, mapping. (William R. Ringle, Director) May 1986.

Fredericksburg Battlefields Park

Reconstruction and field reconnaissance of 19th century property boundaries for the National Park Service.

(Site of Stonewall Jackson's death.) Spring 1981.