No description available.

Excavations at the site of Ixlú in northern Guatemala recovered a series of skulls and dismembered postcrania from a Postclassic (ca. A.D. 1000—1525) Maya temple. The current study considers demography, taphonomy (including mortuary processing), cultural modification and biological distance among the remains in light of ethnohistoric and archaeological data. Doing so addresses who made the deposits, why they were made, and who was interred, and informs on the use of ritual violence in the Postclassic Southern Lowlands. Six skulls were arranged in pairs on the east-west midline of the building, and fifteen skulls were placed in rows in the center of the building. All of the skulls faced east. Four postcrania were placed perpendicular to the skull rows. The skulls and postcrania were primarily late adolescent to young adult males. Three of the individuals exhibited a rare dental trait, supernumerary teeth, indicating that at least some of the individuals were related. The most likely scenario to account for the deposits is that the Itzá, a dominant political group in the area, sacrificed enemy combatants drawn from raiding and buried them as a part of a dedicatory ritual in the temple.

No description available.

Presented in the “Segundo Coloquio Internacional de Bioarqueología.”

Presented in the session “Commingled and Disarticulated Human Remains: Working Towards Improved Theory, Method and Data." Fragmentation theory considers the likelihood and meaning stemming from the idea that incomplete objects and individuals in the material record were intentionally broken and distributed. One of the standing challenges confronting fragmentation theory is identifying intent. Here we analyze a Postclassic (AD 950 – 1524) Maya mass grave from site of Zacpetén in northern Guatemala via a Ripley’s K analysis. The analysis demonstrates that the mass grave exhibits statistically significant differences of long bone distributions and indicates intentional manipulation of elements on the basis of their side.

No description available.

No description available.

Presented as a Invited Guest Speaker for Darwin Day

Presented as a Invited guest speaker via skype to the course “Anthropology of the Human Body.”

Presented as a Invited guest speaker for the series “Art at the Threshold: Language, Image and Ritual."