El Pilar: Archaeology Under the Canopy
By Anabel Ford and Maggie Knapp Tue, Sep 06, 2011
Pioneering work at an ancient Maya center advances a new paradigm for sustainability.
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By Anabel Ford and Maggie Knapp
Anabel Ford is dedicated to decoding the ancient Maya landscape. While living in Guatemala in 1978, she learned from local people that the Maya forest was an edible garden when she mapped a 30-km transect between the Petén sites of Tikal and Yaxhá. In 1983, she discovered and later mapped the Maya city El Pilar. In 1993, after settlement survey and excavations, she launched a multidisciplinary program to understand the culture and nature of El Pilar. Ford’s publications are cited nationally and internationally as part of the foundation of Maya settlement pattern studies. Her archaeological themes are diverse, appearing in geological, ethnobiological, geographical, and botanical arenas and locally in Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico. Her concern for management of cultural monuments, in-situ conservation, and tourism appear in Getty publications.
Maggie Knapp is an Art History and Global Studies double major studying at UC Santa Barbara, currently working for the nonprofit ESP~Maya under the direction of Dr. Anabel Ford. Knapp plans to work with cultural patrimony and social development serving indigenous areas of the world such as that of the Maya. Knapp has authored articles in the areas of both art criticism and anthropology, researched aesthetic and social theory, and will be pursuing graduate work in art as a tool of cultural and economic development.
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Experience where fiction meets fact at the exciting new exhibition, Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology, beginning April 28, 2011 at the Montreal Science Center. This will be like an amusement park of learning for the whole family, with a rare collection of artifacts on loan from the National Geographic Society and the Penn Museum.
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Researched and written by Spanish colonial coin expert Carol Tedesco, the succinct, 40 page Treasure Coins of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha and the Santa Margarita answers all the most frequently asked questions about the fascinating and “most coveted and widely traded money on earth,” including what the coins look like when first discovered, the meanings of the various markings, how they are cleaned, conserved and graded, what they were worth in the 17th century, and the most up-to-date information on the names and periods of office of the men who made them. To order, see www.lostgalleons.com.
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