This year’s symposium, titled Understanding Maya Fare: Beyond Tamales and Cacao, will explore food consumption practices throughout ancient Maya history.
The goal of this symposium is to showcase some of the most recent research in the Maya region that helps us examine and understand an array of topics surrounding the political decline of the Maya Civilization. New texts, new analytical techniques, and new discoveries discussed in these presentations will help us appreciate how complex the cultural processes and environmental events in the Maya Lowlands that culminated in what has often been seen as a political collapse was.
Since 2002, Tulane University has hosted a weekend of talks and workshops dedicated to the study of the Maya civilization of Mexico and Central America. This yearly meeting has called upon scholars from a wide spectrum of specialties -- archaeology, art history, cultural anthropology, epigraphy, history, and linguistics -- to elucidate the many facets of this fascinating Mesoamerican culture. In developing a broad approach to the subject matter, we aim to draw the interest of a wide ranging audience -- from the expert to the beginner.
To that end, we have assembled a wonderful group of scholars in Maya archaeology whose different fields of expertise will allow us to muster as diverse an array of evidence as possible. Given how rare of an accomplishment such a consortium is, please JOIN US!
Speakers
"The Hidden Landscapes of the Ancient Maya" -- Melissa Galván-Bernal
"And a Good Time was Had by All: Alcohol and Feasting in Mesoamerica" -- Dorie Reents-Budet
"Ceren's Subsistence Surprises" -- Payson Sheets
"Spicy, Sweet, Weedy, and Wild: Ancient Maya Cuisine as Told by the Archaeobotanical Record" -- Clarissa Cagnato
"Maya Culinary Realms and Mesoamerican Use and Exchange of Cacao" -- Kathryn Sampeck
"Tobacco Before the Dark Age of the Marlboro Man" -- Jennifer Loughmiller-Cardinal
"Eating, Isotopes, and the Ancient Maya" -- Lori Wright
"Where the Wild Things Were: Animals in Ancient Maya Diet, Economy, and Exchange" -- Erin Thornton
"Maya Food Justice and the Memory of Meals" -- Chelsea Fisher
"God Food: Ritual Alimentation of Ch'orti' Deities" -- Kerry Hull
"New Perspectives on Subsistence Practices in the Formative Andes" -- Jason Nesbitt
"Lordly Drinks: Regional Variation in Classic Maya Elite Beverages" -- Alexandre Tokovinine
"Beyond How Many? and How Big? Assessing Ceramic Indicators of Feasting" -- Caroline Parris
"Introduction to the Ch’orti Maya Language" -- Kerry Hull
"The Sustenance of Life for the Maya" -- Ixnal Ambrocia Cuma