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.