How did you get into archaeology?
Well, I wasn't the typical future archeologist who was always digging around in sandboxes. I wasn't all that enamored of dinosaurs, either. But I liked to hike and camp, and I guess I was a little bit prone to getting bored by things. So I really liked situations where you never knew what was going to happen or what you were going to discover, and archeology is like that.
How do you do what you do? Describe your work process.
I spend about half of my time teaching and the other half conducting my research. Part of that research is being down in Belize, in Central America, studying the ways of the ancient Maya who occupied that area in the past and still do today.
We stay on field projects for three months. We find the remains of their houses, which were usually built on platforms above the ground. We sometimes find the remains of the pottery and stone tools they used, and carved monuments. You end up with a lot of artifacts to analyze. There's also a tremendous amount of paperwork. The fieldwork is maybe ten or twenty percent of the research effort; the rest of the time I spend in the lab, analyzing the material that we have mapped or excavated.
Being in the field is a pretty intense thing--think summer camp. We live in little cabins. Sometimes we have running water, sometimes we don't. We dine together at evening lab sessions. We get up at about five a.m. to do fieldwork and close shop by two, before it gets too hot.
How many people are involved in what you do?
I have two graduate students in my lab. In the field, there can be upwards of thirty people--about a dozen undergrads, six grad students and various scientists who come to do their own studies.
What do you like most or dislike most about what you do?
I like the fact that I call my own shots. But it's hard to be away from my family for extended periods of time. It's also very competitive to get funding, so you really have to spend a lot of time and energy writing grant proposals. I think it's pretty rewarding as a woman because the field was traditionally male-dominated. The jobs are still primarily going to men, so there is not a level playing field yet.
What was high school like? Were you into archaeology?
No. I was really interested in political activism then.
Did your college major relate to your work?
I studied anthropology of religion. I was raised as a staunch Catholic and had gone through a period of rebellion against that, and liked the perspective on religions that I learned in anthropology. That's how I got into archaeology.
Tell us about the Xibun field project.
We think this was an area where they were growing a lot of chocolate a thousand years ago. It was a luxury item, and was drunk and sometimes flavored with a little chili powder or cornmeal. You need a valley with special soils and a certain kind of flooding regime to be able to grow chocolate trees, which the Xibun area has. We're trying to find out when people moved there and whether they grew chocolate trees and traded chocolate with places where it couldn't be grown. Also, we've been trying to study the nature of the rituals conducted in the caves next to the valley.
