Meeting Summaries

Highlights of previous meetings of The Pre-Columbian Society.

May 13, 2023 Dr. Stanley Guenther, AFAR: “From Apogee to Abandonment: The Twilight of Tikal.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version is available for Society members at Meeting Archives.

April 8, 2023 Professor Peter E. Siegel, Montclair State University: “The Taínos of the Caribbean: History and Ancestry of the First Indigenous People Encountered by Christopher Columbus.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version is available for Society members at Meeting Archives.

March 11, 2023 Professor Michael Carrasco: “Writing, Ritual, and Rulership in Formative Period Mesoamerica.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version is available for Society members at Meeting Archives.

February 11, 2023 Professor Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos: “Lost and Found: The Collection of the First National Museum of Guatemala.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

January 14, 2023 Dr. Nicholas Hellmuth: “Patolli Game Boards: Maya, Teotihuacan, Toltec, Mixtec, Aztec.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

December 10, 2022 Professsor Gerardo Aldana: “K’uk’ulkan and other feathered serpents” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

November 12, 2022 Professor Jenn Loughmiller Cardinal: “The Pigments and Poison – What can flasks tell us about the Classic Maya?” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

October 15, 2022 Professor Ivan Šprajc: “Astronomical significance of Group E-type complexes in Maya architecture.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

September 10, 2022 Professor Lisa Lucero: “The Ancestral Maya Worldview, Pilgrimage, and Conservation.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

May 14, 2022 Dr. David Stuart: “The Speaking Steps: Reconstructing Narrative and Image on the Great Hieroglyphic Stairway at Copan.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

April 9, 2022 Dr. Peter Biró: “Chichen Itza in the Context of the History of the Terminal Classic Period (800-932)” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

March 12, 2022 Dr. Barbara MacLeod, an independent scholar: “Nurturing the New Maize, Anchoring the New Year: The Painted Texts of Naj Tunich Cave, Peten, Guatemala.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

February 19, 2022 Dr. Joshua J. Kwoka, Dept. of Anthropology, Georgia State University: “Death, Liminality, and Ancestor Veneration among the Ancient Maya.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

January 8, 2022 Jorge Perez de Lara: “Mesoamerican Artwork Photography.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

December 11, 2021 Dr. Andrew Munro: “Cosmology and Culture at Chaco Canyon NM.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

November 13, 2021 Dr. Gordon Whittaker: “The challenge of Aztec writing: Navigating the interplay between sign and symbol.” He also gave a morning workshop on Aztec hieroglyphs. The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

October 9, 2021 Allen Christenson: “May It Dawn So That We Are Remembered: The Popol Vuh and Modern Maya Society.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

September 18, 2021 Dr. Marcello Canuto: “Taking the High Ground: Lowland Maya Settlement Patterns as Seen through LIDAR.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

May 8, 2021 John Burkhalter of Princeton University: “The Jaguar Speaks: Making Music in Maya Art (In Memory of Elin Danien)” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

April 10, 2021 Hutch Kinsman: “State of the research on answering the question, ‘Did the Maya observe meteor outbursts related to meteor showers?’” He also gave a special Workshop on the methods and tools he uses for archeoastronomy.

March 13, 2021 Marc Zender: “How Writing Came to Northern Yucatán.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

February 13, 2021 John Hoopes, professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas: “The American Mediterranean: Evaluating the Pre-Hispanic “Hinterlands” of the Isthmo-Colombian Area and Its Neighbors.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

January 9, 2021 Miriam Kolar, Visiting Scholar, Amherst College: “Performance Experiments in Archaeoacoustics Research at Chavín de Huántar, Perú.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

December 12, 2020 Matthew Looper, Department of Art and Art History, California State University, Chico, spoke on “An Update on the Maya Hieroglyphic Database.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

November 14, 2020 Prof. Ken Seligson, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, gave a talk entitled “Burning Rings of Fire: Ancient Maya Resource Conservation Strategies.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

October 10, 2020 Dr. Steve Gullberg, Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma, spoke on “Astronomy of the Inca Empire.” The meeting was online via Zoom. A recorded version for Members only is available at Meeting Archives.

September 12, 2020 Cameron L. McNeil, Associate Professor in Anthropology at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, spoke on “Hidden from the inscriptions: elite and commoner women in the ancient polity of Copan, Honduras.” The meeting was online via Zoom.

May 16, 2020 online via Zoom. Dr. Joanne Michel (PhD Foreign Cultures & Languages Community College of Allegheny County -Allegheny Campus) spoke. Her topic was Teotihuacan iconography and the La Ventilla glyphs.

February 22, 2020 at the Penn Museum. Dr Tom Guderjan, Department of Social Sciences at the University of Texas at Tyler: workshop on “The Impact of Remote Sensing on Maya Archaeology,” and talk entitled “Little Kingdoms among the Great Kingdoms: Understanding the Archaeology of Northwestern Belize”

January 11, 2020 at Penn Museum: Dr. Marshall Becker, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at West Chester University: “The Ganawese after 1700: Piscataway Origins, Transformation into the Conoy, and Confederation with the Susquehannock, Lenape and Shawnee in the Lower Susquehanna River Valley”

There was no meeting November 9, 2019. Instead, we urged our members to attend the Museum Opening Weekend Celebration on the following weekend, November 15-17.

October 12, 2019 at Penn Museum: Christopher Layser: “Maya Skyscape Iconography and ‘The Vase of the Count of Days'”

September 14, 2019 visit to the Princeton Art Museum

June 8, 2019 at Penn Museum: Jeffrey Vadala PhD: “Using Virtual Reality to Understand Ancient Maya Astronomy and Human-Environmental Relations”

May 11, 2019 at Penn Museum: Dr. Simon Martin, Associate Curator and Keeper, Penn Museum: “Maya Politics Redux: Recent Developments in Understanding Classic Maya Political Organization”

March 9, 2019 at Penn Museum: Dr. Marshall Becker, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at West Chester University: “Plaza plans at Tikal: understanding the organization of a classic period Maya city”

February 16, 2019 at Penn Museum: Dr. Élodie Dupey García, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, UNAM and Dr. Gabrielle Vail, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: “Cultural Interactions in Late Postclassic Mesoamerica: Exploring Cognate Almanacs in the Borgia Group and Maya Codices”

November 10, 2018 at Penn Museum: Marcello Canuto, PhD, Tulane University: “Ancient Lowland Maya Complexity as Revealed by Lidar Survey in the Peten: Implications for a New Kaanul Dynasty Altar at La Corona”

October 13, 2018 at Penn Museum: Geraldine Patrick-Encina, PhD: “A Commentary to Gabrielle Vail’s zodiacal interpretation of the deer hunting almanac in the Madrid Codex”

May 5, 2018 at Penn Museum: Dr. Gabrielle Vail: Workshop: “Warfare, Hunting, and Venus in the Maya and Borgia Group Codices” and Lecture: “Hero Twins: Narratives from Mesoamerica and Beyond”

April 14, 2018 at Penn Museum: Professor Amerigo Mendoza-Mori, Quechua Language Program, University of Pennsylvania: “Quechua beyond the Incas: Contemporary use, promotion and teaching of Indigenous Languages”

February 10, 2018 at Penn Museum: Cherra Wyllie, PhD: “Classic Veracruz Writing”

January 13, 2018 at Penn Museum: Andrew Hamilton, lecturer in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University: “Life and Death in an Andean River: The Making of Ancestors on a Lambayeque Vessel”

December 9, 2017 at Penn Museum: Megan Kassabaum, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Penn, and Assistant Curator in the American Section of the Museum: “Recent excavations at Smith Creek: exploring the Woodland-Mississippian cultural transition in Southwest Mississippi”

November 4, 2017 at Penn Museum: Daniel Harris, PhD Candidate, O’Connor Lab, Graduate Program in Molecular Medicine, Program in Personalized and Genomic Medicine, Institute for Genome Sciences, University of Maryland School of Medicine: “The Evolutionary Genomic Dynamics of Peruvians Before, During, and After the Inca Empire”

October 14, 2017 at Penn Museum: Eleanor King, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology, Howard University: “Maya Markets, Merchants, and the Muddle in Our Model”

September 9, 2017 There was no afternoon speaker. Instead, we visited a new exhibition at Penn Museum: “Cultures in the Crossfire: Stories From Syria and Iraq.”

June 10, 2017 at Penn Museum: Jay A. Frogel, PhD, Photographer, World Images; Professor of Astronomy, Emeritus at The Ohio State University; Consultant in Astronomy, Astrophysics, and Space Sciences: “Maya Palaces in Ruins: Stephens’ and Catherwood’s Presentation of the Past”

May 13, 2017 at Penn Museum: Rob Fergus, PhD, Geography and Environmental Studies: “Muut Questions: Exploring Modern and Ancient Mayan Connections to Birds”

April 8, 2017 at Penn Museum: Dr.Jeffrey C. Splitstoser, Assistant Research Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University: “Twisted Records: Wari-style Khipus and What We Might Know about Them” and Andean Textile Workshop: “Inka and Wari Khipu Making” with Dr. Anne Tiballi, Consulting Scholar at Penn Museum

March 11, 2017 at Penn Museum: Franco D. Rossi, PhD, Boston University and Brandeis University: “Is Re-Provenience Possible?: Dilemmas of Context and Looting at Xultun, Guatemala”

February 11, 2017 at Penn Museum: Raquel Fleskes, Third-Year Ph.D. student in Molecular Anthropology in the University of Pennsylvania: “DNA & the Peopling of the Caribbean”

January 14, 2017 at Penn Museum: Debora Trein, PhD: “A Community and Its Temple: Community Impact at A Public Monumental Space at the Ancient Maya Site of La Milpa, Northwest Belize”

December 10, 2016 at Penn Museum: Simon Martin, PhD, Associate Curator and Keeper of the American Section at the University of Pennsylvania:
“Before Calakmul: Recovering the Snake Kings of the Early Classic”

November 12, 2016 at Penn Museum: Aldo Anzures Tapia, Graduate Research Fellow pursuing his Ph.D. in Educational Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania and Kasey Diserens, third year doctoral student in the Anthropology Department, University of Pennsylvania:
“The Tihosuco Heritage Preservation and Community Development Project: Strengthening Ties to Language and the Built Environment”

October 22, 2016 at Penn Museum: Jennifer Brown, PhD Candidate, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Anthropology: “Ambiguous Futures and Murky Waters: Climate Change and Risk in Southeast Alaska”