From House to Home: Small-Town Maya Archaeology in Belize

How and why do archaeologists start a project? Where do they begin? What do they do? This book presents a case study from the ongoing Stann Creek Regional Archaeology Project (SCRAP) in Belize, Central America. The authors explore their long-term archaeology research project involving foreign researchers working together with local Maya villagers. Archaeologists Meaghan M. Peuramaki-Brown, Shawn G. Morton, and Jillian M. Jordan deviate from popular narratives surrounding the civilization by studying a small, relatively short-lived (ca. 700–900 AD) Ancestral Maya town along the eastern frontier, focusing on the educational processes involved in archaeological thought and practice. They examine the culture of archaeology in Belize and the Maya Peoples involved in engaging and transforming this culture and the resulting research. They liken the building of their research project to the construction of a traditional Mopan Maya house or nah. Each chapter is linked to a stage of house construction and correlated elements of the project's development and ends with the creation of a home or otoch. Through this framing of SCRAP’s story within a central aspect of a present-day Mopan Maya community, this book attempts to turn archaeology from the study of the past to a conversation with the present.