Dr. Eleanor Harrison-Buck, Director
Department of Anthropology
Huddleston Hall, Room 311
Durham, NH 03824
e.harrison-buck@unh.edu
belizefieldschool@unh.edu
Dr. Marieka Brouwer Burg, Co-Director
Department of Anthropology
Williams Hall, Rm. 514A
Burlington, VT 05405
marieka.brouwer-burg@uvm.edu
Brian Norris serves as Lead Surveyor for the BREA project, establishing the protocol for the GPS and Total Station mapping components of the project. He oversees field survey techniques, documentation procedures and land records research. He is involved in survey reconnaissance activities and advises on other project logistics. Brian is a Registered Professional Land Surveyor with a background in Forestry and Surveying Engineering. He received his MBA from Husson University, his BS in Surveying Engineering at the University of Maine and his AAS degree for Land Surveying/Forestry from Paul Smiths College of Arts and Sciences. Brian is a Vice President at the James W. Sewall Company in Old Town, Maine and is responsible for a wide variety of geospatial engineering and mapping projects serving government, forestry, energy, commercial and private landowner market sectors. He provides leadership to a team of project managers, production managers and technical personnel involved in the project workflow of Sewall’s aerial imagery acquisition and processing, GPS control surveys, orthophotography and photogrammetric and cadastral map compilation. His comprehensive background in land surveying, mapping, geospatial engineering and forestry includes both international and domestic experience.
Dr. Satoru Murata received a B.S. in Physics from Kyoto University in Japan, a B.A. in Anthropology from State University of New York, Stony Brook, and a Ph.D. in Archaeological Studiesfrom Boston University, with a specialization in Maya archaeology. He has participated in the Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) projectsince the project began in 2011.His interests include ancient craft production and technology, as well as modern technology employed in the field of archaeology, such as GIS, remote sensing, and data visualization. For the BREA project, he leads the survey and mapping components and has recently become involved in mapping and 3D visualization through the use ofTotal Station Data (TDS)and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), otherwise known as drones.
Lori Phillips iscurrently an archaeology Ph.D. student working with Dr. Erin Thornton at Washington State University. Herresearch interests include stable isotope analysis, zooarchaeology, and the ancient Maya. Before coming to WSU, sheworked on archaeological projects in both South Africa and Central America, but hercurrent research is based in the Maya region. HerM.A. thesis focused on turkey husbandry at the Postclassic site of Mayapán (Yucatan, Mexico) through integrated zooarchaeological and isotopic analyses. As part of a member of the BREA project, herdissertation research is usingstable isotope (carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur) and zooarchaeological analyses of faunal assemblages from the Belize River watershed to explore ancient Maya aquatic resource use, specifically how use may have changed during periods of environmental and population stress
In 2012, David Buck completed his doctoral degree in Interdisciplinary Ecology at the University of Florida and is currently the Associate Director of the Shoals Marine Laboratory, jointly managed by Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire. On the BREA project, David provides assistance in the archaeological reconnaissance and directs the Paleoecology Project, examining the different habitats and human-environment interactions to better understand past subsistence practices along the Belize River and its tributaries. He offers his expertise in understanding the many aquatic ecosystems (wetlands, rivers, cenotes, and pools) that abound in the BREA study area and that served as critical resources for the ancient Maya. He studies the water resources through fisheries and aquatic foodweb studies. In addition, he plans to carry out limnological work through a program of coring in the standing bodies of water to help us to reconstruct the paleoenvironment, past rainfall conditions, and potential drought(s) that may have effected the ancient Maya settlement in this part of the southern lowlands.
Marieka Brouwer Burg is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Hampshire. She was born in Madison, Wisconsin and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an undergraduate. There, Marieka majored in Anthropology and Art History, while working in the Wisconsin Archaeology and Cartography Laboratories. At Michigan State University, she conducted research focused on hunter-gatherer land-use strategies in the Post Glacial Netherlands. As part of this work, Marieka received a Fulbright fellowship and spent a year working closely with colleagues at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, the Groningen Institute of Archaeology, University of Groningen, and Utrecht University. In August 2011, Marieka joined the BREA project and has since been working as the Lab Director, GIS specialist, archaeological illustrator, and project photographer. Her current research investigates the implications of movement, trade, and territory delineation within and surrounding the BREA project area using GIS analysis. She is particularly interested in understanding the sociopolitical role played by the ritual-ceremonial complex at the BREA site of Hats Kaab, where she and Dr. Runggaldier have carried out multiple excavations.
Eleanor Harrison-Buck is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of New Hampshire. She received both her M.A. and Ph.D. in Archaeological Studies from Boston University, with a specialization in Maya archaeology. She directs the Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) project in Belize, examining the deep history of the eastern Belize Watershed from Late Formative to Colonial times. Her research interests include social identity and power, divine kingship and religious ideology, indigenous and colonial economies, and technical and stylistic studies of architecture and material culture. As a theoretically-oriented archaeologist, her research incorporates indigenous knowledge and social theory to better understand native ontologies and to provide new ways of thinking about pre-Hispanic and colonial material culture, and past perceptions of the political, economic,and sacred landscape.She has authored numerous articles and book chapters and is the editor of the volume, Power and Identity in Archaeological Theory and Practice: Case Studies from Ancient Mesoamerica(University of Utah Press, 2012) and a co-editor (with Julia Hendon) of Relational Identities and Other-than-Human Agency in Archaeology(University Press of Colorado, 2018)
Astrid Runggaldier holds a PhD in Mesoamerican archaeology from Boston University. Her interests lie in the rise of the institution of kingship among the Maya and the development of social complexity in early states. Her material culture studies include ancient Maya architecture and household archaeology, examining social memory and the relationship of people and place in urban communities. On the BREA project, she serves as Laboratory co-Director and conducts research on the Preclassic period, the residential components of settlements, and the small finds from excavations. In addition to working with members of the BREA Project, she serves as the Assistant Director for the Mesoamerican Center at UT Austin, manages UT’sArt and Art History Collection ofPre-Columbian artifacts and ethnographic textiles from the Americas, and teaches undergraduate classes in the Department of Art and Art History.
Adam Kaeding received his Ph.D. in Archaeological Studies from Boston University in 2013, with a specialization in Maya cultural survival under the circumstances of Spanish Colonialism in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. He has experience excavating, surveying and mapping British and Spanish colonial sites in the U.S.; Prehispanic and colonial Maya sites in Guatemala, Belize and Mexico; and Middle Bronze Age -Greek/Roman occupation in Northern Syria. He is a Senior Archaeologist at The 106 Group in Saint Paul, MN. On the BREA project, he serves as the survey co-director and his research is focused on British and Spanish colonial period sites in the BREA study area.