XULTUN, GUATEMALA
Laboratory Project: Stone, Ceramic, and Bioarchaeological Material Analyses
Beginning in 2016, I've worked alongside my colleagues, Boris Beltran, Henry Perez, and Monica Urquizu, among others, to develop a laboratory project that serves as both an educational opportunity and a means of analyzing our project's backlog of material culture. During the summer of 2019, we conducted our largest lab project, which included the analysis of all stone artifacts from the site and an intensive analysis of Xultun pottery. As a result, several students from the University of San Carlos finished the laboratory component of their studies, the site's resources and ceramic chronology are better understood, and both my collaborator, Henry Perez, and I collected the data for our respective research projects.
Photos courtesy of the San Bartolo-Xultun Regional Archaeological Project and the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Guatemala 
The Stone Production District
My dissertation titled Producing Stone and State: The Intersection of Domestic and Institutional Economies in Classic Maya Society, evaluates the socioeconomic organization of limestone industries in Classic Maya society. To do this, I conducted excavations in a Stone Production District at the site of Xultun, Guatemala, focusing on both quarries and the surrounding residences. Through an analysis of household provisioning strategies and production related toolkits, I determined that these populations were directly profiting from their work, suggesting that limestone was a commercialized resource that was, at times, offered by specialist households in the service of monumental state expressions..
Photo courtesy of the San Bartolo-Xultun Regional Archaeological Project.
LOS SAPOS (12F-5)
During both the 2012 and 2014 season at Xultun, I excavated an Early Classic Period sweat bath ornamented in painted stucco. This incredible iconography was the subject of my BFA honors thesis in Art History at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Over the last several years, I've collaborated with Dr. Ashley Sharpe and Elizabeth Hannigan to complete the analyses of the various materials recovered in two associated deposits. The results of our material analyses were recently published open access in Cambridge Archaeological Journal in an article titled Revisiting the Past: Material Negotiations between the Classic Maya and an Entombed Sweat Bath at Xultun, Guatemala. The iconographic analysis is currently in press at RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics and is scheduled for publication in 2021.
Photo by David Coventry, courtesy of the National Geographic Society (published, August, 2014).