Marcello Canuto | Mapping the World of the Maya | Talks at Google
71Marcello Canuto discusses the use of Light Detection and Ranging, or LIDAR, and other modern technology to map the ancient ruins of the Maya.
Marcello A. Canuto is currently Director of the Middle American Research Institute and Professor of Anthropology at Tulane University. He received his BA from Harvard University in 1991 and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002. Before coming to Tulane in 2009, he was an Assistant Professor at Yale University. He has undertaken archaeological excavations in the Maya region, South America, India, north Africa, and the northeast US. His research has focused on ancient household and community dynamics, the development of socio-political complexity in ancient societies, the definition of identity through material culture, and the modern social contexts of archaeology. His primary research interest has been the Maya area where he currently co-directs an archaeological project at the site of La Corona in the Peten jungle of northern Guatemala. Most recently, he has begun to use new remote-sensing technologies, such as a lidar, to study the wide-ranging and intricate integrative mechanisms that the ancient Maya used to build and maintain a socio-politically complex society throughout their over a thousand years of history. Among Canuto’s many publications are the edited volumes The Regimes of the Ancient Maya, Understanding Early Classic Copan: New Research and New Themes, and The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective.
Moderated by Andrew Lookingbill.