The San Pedro Maya Project is co-directed by Minette C. Church (UCCS), Jason Yaeger (University of Wisconsin, Madison) and Richard M. Leventhal (Director - University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology). Project personnel also include graduate students Jennifer L. Dornan (UCLA) and John Gust (UCCS). UCCS undergraduates who have already completed the UCCS field and/or lab techniques course(s) have gone on to work on this project every year, gaining additional experience in both the field and the lab.
San Pedro Siris was a town in what is now western Belize, settled between roughly 1850 and 1920 by Caste War era Maya who came from the Yucatán. During much of this time, these Yucatec Maya villagers were relatively self-sufficient and politically autonomous from regional governments who nominally claimed territorial control: namely the Guatemalans, Mexicans and the English colonial governors in British Honduras (now Belize). The ways in which these Maya responded to attempts by outsiders to rule them ranged from overt military resistance to everyday practices considered subversive by authorities, such as economic and subsistence self-sufficiency, and these practices are reflected in the archaeological record the occupants of San Pedro left behind. This research will help illuminate a little-known aspect of the Belizean past, including how these Maya created and maintained ethnic and national identities within the British colonial system, and how they were ultimately incorporated into the Belizean nation.
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