My primary areas of interest are in the growth and decline of complex poliites, human roles in landscape evolution, religious ideology in rank socieities, paleoclimate reconstruction, political economy, human uses of caves, and spatial analysis. Most of my research focuses on Mesoamerica and specifically in the Maya Lowlands. Two of my current projects involve looking at how complex polities colonize vacant landscapes and collaborative research into the development of behavioral ecology models of human-climate-landscape interactions for complex political and economic systems. For more on my research interests, see Research Interests

For information on student research opportunities on my projects

For a full list of publications and recent presentations, see Publications & Presentations

To read an extensive review of my two books on Mesoamerican cave use in the archaeological past and the ethnographic present Click Here 

Recent and Publications

2003 Wood Figurines, Manikin Scepters, and Religious Specialists in Ancient Maya Society. Ancient Mesoamerica, Cambridge Press 14(2):218-236 (with P. Wanyerka and M. Shah)

2005 Stone Houses and Earth Lords: Maya Religion in the Cave Context. David Carasco Series Mesoamerican Worlds, University Press of Colorado (Edited with J. Brady)

2005 In the Maw of the Earth Monster: Studies of Mesoamerican Ritual Cave Use. Linda Schele Series in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology, University of Texas Press (Edited with J. Brady)

2005 The Early Classic in Southern Belize: A Regional View from Uxbenká and Ek Xux. In Papers of the 2004 Belize Archaeology Symposium: Archaeological Investigations in the Eastern Lowlands. J. Morris and J. Awe, editors. pp.169-178, Institute of Archaeology, Belmopan, Belize

2006 Mapping Uxbenká: Site Settlement in the Rio Blanco Valley, Belize. In Papers of the 2005 Belize Archaeology Symposium: Archaeological Investigations in the Eastern Lowlands. J. Morris and J. Awe, editors. Institute of Archaeology, Belmopan, Belize (with A. Kindon and P. Wanyerka)

2007 Chocolate and the Underworld Space of Death:  The Recovery of Intact Cacao from an Early Classic Mortuary Cave. Ethnohistory 54(2):  273-303 (with W. Jeffrey Hurst)