The MesoAmerican Research Center, and the Study of the Maya Forest Gardens of El Pilar

Please join our first Tertulia, a new LAIS forum for conversation, sharing, and debate. Our guest, Dr. Anabel Ford,  will lecture on ”The MesoAmerican Research Center, and the Study of the Maya Forest Gardens of El Pilar” on Tuesday January 29th from 12:00 to 1:30 pm in HSSB 3041.  Light refreshments will be served. Feel free to bring your lunch!  This event is free and open to the public.

The MesoAmerican Research Center (MARC) is part of the Institute of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research at UCSB and was established in 1988. Dr. Anabel Ford, MARC’s founder and director, is an anthropologist affiliated with LAIS and the author, with Rondald Nigh, of The Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millenia of Sustainable Cultivation of the Tropical Woodlands (Londond and New York: Routledge, New Frontiers in Historical Ecology Series, 2015). You can read the book descrption here: https://www.routledge.com/The-Maya-Forest-Garden-Eight-Millennia-of-Sust…

Her presentation will summarize 30 years of research in MARC, highlighting opportunities available for undergraduates and graduate students interested in Mesoamerica and the Maya in particular, with reference to her research in the Maya forest of Belize and Guatemala focused at the ancient Maya city she found, El Pilar. The presentation will include a 20-minute video produced by UCSB (http://www.news.ucsb.edu/archaeology-under-canopy) with discussion to follow.

The MARC was originally established in 1988 to launch the interdisciplinary conference “The Language of Maya Hieroglyphs.” Faculty from Anthropology, Art History, Linguistics, and History collaborated to bring in the top scholars addressing writing decipherment and the Maya. Collaborations continue with Art History, examining iconography of Maya vases; with Geology, researching the use of volcanic ash temper in Maya ceramics, and with Geography in the spatial distribution of ancient Maya sites, and the study of soil and vegetation of the Maya forest. Currently, funding from Middle Ages World Wide supported the collaborative launching of the Maya Forest Atlas and interns drawing Geography and Anthropology have been able to help in the continued development of this rich interdisciplinary database available at  http://marc-ucsb.opendata.arcgis.com/

For more information about the center go to http://www.marc.ucsb.edu