Chief JASON Project Archaeologist

Director of the Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) ,Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, UCLA and Director of the Xunantunich Archaeological Project (XAP) Belize

2. Education and Professional Training: I received both my B.A. and Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. After a post-doctoral year at Peabody Museum at Harvard, I accepted a position in the Department of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Albany (SUNY Albany) and remained there for eight years. I was recently hired by UCLA and came to Los Angeles about three years ago to assume my present positions.

3. Mission on the JASON Project: I am interested in all aspects of human societies and specifically want to examine how societies change over time, and how they deal with internal and external stresses within their societal system. I therefore use the ancient Maya world as my laboratory to study human cultures. I am interested in all aspects of the ancient MayaÑincluding the economics, politics, social issues, and the ideology, to mention just a few. Currently, I am working with a large team of researchers at the ancient Late Classic city of Xunantunich in the Cayo district of Belize. This will be our third large season of work at this ancient city, and we expect to continue for another five or six years.

The Xunantunich Archaeological Project has two central objectives: (1.) to conduct research at this ancient city in order to develop models for how the Maya civilization was changing during a period of political and social crisis (the Collapse); and (2.) to consolidate these ruins and develop the site for tourism for the Government of Belize.

During the JASON Project, I feel that my main mission is to demonstrate to students the immediacy and excitement of research while on an archaeological expedition. In studying the past, we are also studying all human society, including our own world today. Finally, I want to emphasize the importance of working with and consulting the modern Maya on their own past and their ancestral heritage. This year, the concentration of one part of the JASON Project on archaeology is different from those in the past, for it focuses upon the study of societies, past and present. My goal is, therefore, to facilitate an understanding of the goals, methods, and theories of archaeology for the JASON students. I would like students to walk away from this project with a sense of curiosity about themselves and about human societies. They should begin to think about the type of society they live in and the types of societies other people live in. I hope that students will realize that different cultures are not wrong or strange, but just different. There is an important cross-cultural understanding that I believe archaeology, anthropology, and other social science disciplines bring to the JASON Project.

4. How much time do you think you spend conducting archaeological research? For the last twenty-one years (except for two), I have been in the field conducting research every year. These field seasons range in length anywhere from one month to eight months per year. Therefore, I am probably saying that 30 to 40 percent of my life during the past 20 years has been spent conducting archaeological research within the Maya area.

5. What made you decide to be an archaeologist? I only decided to be an archaeologist when I was 20 years old. Before that, I had read the wonderful stories of the discovery of King ut's tomb in Egypt, or of Heinrich Schliemann and Troy, when I was young. However, I never really thought about archaeology as a profession. When I was in college, I needed to fill out my schedule, and decidedÑ purely for funÑto try an archaeology course. It was this course, and then new archaeology courses each year, that convinced me that this was something that was fascinating and something that I wanted to continue to do for a long time. At that point, I jumped into archaeology and have never regretted that decision.

6. What type of classes did you take in high school? I took the required science and humanities-type classes. But to be an archaeologist, there wasÕtÑand isnÕtelect set of classes to take. You can come into archaeology from a variety of different directions and interests, including architecture, the environment, religion, political organization, social organization, economics, and other interests. All of these things focus upon how humans function within their world (which includes both their social and their physical environment). It is this incredible breadth which keeps me fascinated with archaeology and anthropology.

7. What was your best subject in school? It certainly wasnÕt science. I would probably say English literature.

8. When you were growing up, who were your heroes? The only public individual who had an impact on me was JFK [John F. Kennedy], but Kennedy was more of a reference point for my generation and not really a hero.

9. Why do you think young people should study archaeology? For me, archaeology is one of the most fascinating disciplines, for we are attempting to study human societies. Humans are fascinating, for they are extremely difficult to understandÑbut at the same time, their impact upon the world is extremely wide-reaching. I think that we have to look around ourselves and try to understand how societies function, how power is distributed within our culture, and how human organizations function. These are just some of the goals of archaeology, and some of the things that I find so exciting about this discipline. One of the reasons I would emphasize to young people that archaeology is important to study is that we are not only studying the past but also ourselves. It is a study of our world today and how our world functions. We really cannot move forward in our own world without understanding where we come from. The other thing that is so exciting about archaeology is that this study of the past brings an incredible time-depth to our knowledge of human cultures. We are not just dealing with what happened yesterday, or 25 years ago, or even a thousand years ago. We study the entire history of human society on this earth. It is only through this long time-depth that we can begin to understand the processes of change that have occurred within human societies. This is a broad examination of human culture for archaeology allows one to study almost any part of the past and the present. We are attempting to create broad pictures of change, and that is what is so exciting.

10. Why are you involved with the JASON Project? I think that the JASON Project is important, for it is a new approach to education. It is an attempt to make young students aware of what researchers are doing in the field on a day-to-day basis. It has always been very hard for teachers or even college or university professors to demonstrate the excitement of ongoing research. The JASON Project should give the students a sense of the immediacy, a sense of the excitement, a sense of the accomplishments, and a sense of the research that is so important within any learning process.

11. If you weren't in your profession, what would you be? This is a hard question to answer. It would probably be something related to teaching and literature, or perhaps something related to architecture and urban planning. Architecture and urban planning have always interested me, for my father was involved in some of the urban renewal in Boston during the 1950s and 1960s. In many respects, these things still fascinate me as I study the architecture and the urban organization of ancient societies. Actually, until I found archaeology while at college, I planned on continuing in the study of English literature and perhaps teaching English at some level.

12. If a student wants someday to do what you do, what can he or she do to prepare? The only real requirement that you need to study archaeology is a great curiosity about human societies-past and present. There are very few necessary courses in high school that might lead a student into archaeology. In college, anthropology courses tend to be the courses focused upon for potential archaeologists. Because archaeology is actually the study of entire human cultures, an interest in architecture, urban planning, the environment, politics, etc. can all lead to a deep interest in past societies and therefore in archaeology.

13. If you had just one message for students, what would it be? I would say that the message would focus upon fascination in studying human societies. Today, perhaps more than any other time in the history of the world, we must learn to understand our own and other peopleÕs world and cultures. Archaeology and anthropology provide us with ways to understand ourselves and other people.

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Gene Carl Feldman (gene@seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov) (301) 286-9428
Todd Carlo Viola, JASON Foundation for Education (todd@jason.org)