Laura Jane Levi, II
Associate Professor and Chair
Ph.D. The University of Arizona, 1993
Research
Associate Professor and Chair
Ph.D. The University of Arizona, 1993
Research
As a settlement pattern analyst, I study the ways that humans organize themselves with respect to each other and in relation to their productive resources. I am also a student of lowland Maya culture history and my fieldwork documents the diverse spatial configurations characterizing ancient Maya residential architecture. Maya residential arrangements say a great deal about the various institutional affiliations of household members. Many of these institutions had clear territorial boundaries and ecological associations. Overall, therefore, my research in the Maya area examines how land, labor, and institutional memberships converged in the creation of highly complex community landscapes.
Teaching
My teaching stresses the importance of linking data and theory, and the central role played by material culture in social process. Trained as a four-field anthropologist, my undergraduate anthropology courses span three of the discipline’s subfields. At the graduate level, I teach two required courses (History, Method, and Theory of Archaeology and Ecological Anthropology) and several electives (including Landscape and Settlement and The Archaeology of Household and Residence).
Representative Publications
2003 - Space and the limits to community. Perspectives on Ancient Maya Rural Complexity, edited by G. Iannone and S. Connell, pp. 82-93. The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles.
2002 - An institutional perspective on prehispanic Maya residential variation: settlement and community at San Estevan, Belize. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 21:120-141.
