Professor, COLFA Associate Dean, UTSA President's Endowed Professor, Anthropology
I enjoy teaching, and I use a variety of media and methods to teach students what we know about the past, how we know it, and how it can help us understand ourselves and the world around us. My research strengthens my teaching, as I bring to the classroom the most recent interpretations and data from my research, as well as first-hand accounts of fieldwork and the process of interpreting archaeological data. I teach a variety of courses, from large introductory lecture courses, to small graduate and undergraduate seminars, and a summer archaeological field school in Belize. These include introductory courses on archaeology and more advanced courses on Maya and Mesoamerican civilizations, ancient complex societieis, indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica, and the ethnohistory and historical archaeology of New Spain.
Prospective students: I am accepting MA and Ph.D. students. My current research in Belize holds particular opportunities for students who are interested in LiDAR, remote sensing, and settlement survey; the organization of Maya hinterland households and communities; Maya warfare and conflict; and the relationships between the human-environment interface and socio-political change. Students with other research foci are also welcome to apply, as are those who have other fieldwork sites for their thesis or dissertation research.
Current Ph.D. Students: Anthony DeLuca, Rebecca Morris, Michael Petrozza, Sebastián Salgado-Flores, Jason Whitaker
Current MA Students: Mark Eli
2020 Collapse, Transformation, Reorganization: The Terminal Classic Transition in the Maya World. In The Maya World, edited by S. Hutson & T. Ardren, pp. 777–93. Routledge.
2020 Monumental Landscapes, Changing Ideologies, and Political Histories in the Mopan Valley (M.K. Brown & J. Yaeger) In Approaches to Monumental Landscapes of the Ancient Maya, ed. by B.A. Houk, B. Arroyo & T.G. Powis, pp. 290–312. University Press of Florida.
2020 Landscapes of Strategic Mobility in Central America: San Pedro Siris during the Caste War. (M.C. Church, C. Kray, & J. Yaeger) In Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interaction in the Americas, edited by L.M. Panich and S.L. Gonzalez. Routledge.
2018 Inca Sacred Landscapes in the Titicaca Basin. (J. Yaeger & J.M. Lopez Bejarano) In The Oxford Handbook of the Incas, ed. by S. Alconini & A. Covey, pp. 541–57. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
2016 Locating and Dating Sites using LiDAR Survey in a Mosaic Landscape in Western Belize (J. Yaeger, M.K. Brown & B. Cap) Advances in Archaeological Practice 4(3):339–56.
2010 Classic Maya Provincial Politics: Xunantunich and its Hinterlands (edited by L.J. LeCount & J. Yaeger) University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
2000 The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective (edited by M.A. Canuto & J. Yaeger) Routledge Press, London.