Archaeologists 2016
Below is a brief biography of the archaeologists who joined the project team in 2016. In parentheses we indicated the seasons in which they participated.
Gina Buckley (2016)
Gina is a bioarchaeologist and Ph.D. candidate at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) studying ancient migration patterns via geochemical isotope analysis of human bone and tooth enamel. Since 2014, she has been working at Teotihuacan with the Proyecto Arqueologico Tlajinga Teotihuacan (PATT). Human remains from PATT were used for her Master’s project in conjunction with remains from Tlajinga 33 to better understand the paleodemographic processes of this commoner district of Teotihuacan. In 2016 she received her M.A. from Penn State.
In 2016 she joined the Plaza of the Columns Complex Project at Teotihuacan where she hopes to continue to study migration in this multi-ethnic city. Gina has also worked in the southern region of Costa Rica and northern Panama.
Yomara Yoselin Cardeña Carballido (2016)
Yomara is an archaeologist from the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH). Her main interest line focuses on the development of the Teotihuacan culture with special emphasis on the research of the Plaza of the Luna.
In 2011 she carried out the shell analysis of the samples from the Laboratory of Paleoethnozoology, ENAH. The same year she made a bibliographical compilation for the Proyecto Mercados directed by Biol. Carlos Teutli Solano. Later in 2013 and 2014, she joined the Laboratory of Ethnobotany led by Biol. Alberto Villa Kamel. There she acquired experience in ethnobotany. Additionally, she did her social service at the Institute of Geology of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) directed by Biol. Jaime Díaz. There she learned how to prepare thin layers of soil, sediments, ceramics, and obsidian, as well as how to develop the analysis of micromorphology of sediments.
Yomara has participated in various archaeological projects, among them: Proyecto Paisaje Cultural Milpa Alta (2013), Proyecto Plaza de la Luna (PPL) Edificio 1 (2014), and PPL Estructura A (2015). In 2016 she joined the Plaza of the Columns Complex Project to carry out the ceramic analyses of materials from Front A.
Maria Codlin (2016)
Maria is originally from New Zealand and has worked on various archaeological projects in New Zealand, Micronesia, Hawai’i, and China while working towards her B.A. and M.A. at the University of Otago. In 2014 she joined Boston University’s Archaeology Department as a Ph.D. student and became enamored with the ancient Teotihuacan culture after visiting Mexico for the first time in 2015. Her interests include ancient economies, zooarchaeology, and spatial analysis, and she is currently analyzing animal remains from Tlajinga, Teotihuacan, to understand the diet and procurement strategies of people living on the periphery of Teotihuacan. Maria joined the Plaza of the Columns Complex Project in 2016 to gain first hand field experience in Mexico and develop a deeper understanding of the archaeology of Teotihuacan.
Elsa Díaz Ávila (2016)
Elsa was part of the team excavating at Front A during the second field season.
Lexy Hartford (2016, 2017)
Lexy is an archaeologist at Harvard University interested in the ritual practices of Mesoamerica, ceramic residue analysis, and interregional connections between the Maya and Teotihuacan. Lexy received her B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her M.A. at Harvard University. She is currently working on her Ph.D. at Harvard University and has joined the Plaza of the Columns Complex Project as part of this doctoral research. Lexy has also worked on projects in the United States at Cahokia Mounds, Illinois, and in New Mexico and was a member of the Proyecto Arqueológico Tlajinga, Teotihuacan. In addition to her archaeological fieldwork, Lexy works on projects concerning museum collections management and community archaeology in Copan, Honduras, and she hopes to bring these aspects of her work to the Plaza of the Columns Complex Project and future projects.
Daniela Hernández Sariñana (2016, 2017)
Originally from Mexico City, Daniela is a graduate student at the Department of Archaeology at Boston University. Her main areas of interest include household activities in the past and ceramic technology in Teotihuacan and its surrounding settlements.
Currently Daniela is conducting research for her Ph.D. dissertation that focuses on consumption, status, quotidian activities, and their relationship to domestic spaces at Tlajinga, a southern district of Teotihuacan.
Ailie Kerr (2016)
Ailie is a British third-year undergraduate student at Harvard College studying Folklore and Mythology and Archaeology. She has worked on a Viking Age site in Samsø, Denmark, and came to the project at Teotihuacan in the summer of 2016 as a volunteer in the lab. She is particularly interested in ritual, religion, and women’s issues and is currently working on a project about reproduction through a folkloric and anthropological lens.
Tehua Osnaya (2016)
Tehua is an archaeologist who received her bachelor’s degree from the National School of Anthropology and History. In her thesis, she addressed the topic of hunter-gatherers in the southern part of the state of Nuevo Leon. She has collaborated in multiple archaeological projects at Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Queretaro, and Nuevo Leon. During her student days, Tehua worked for a brief season at the Ceramoteca of Teotihuacan and, for this reason, being a part of the Plaza of the Columns Complex Project in 2016 was very rewarding for her.
Currently she works at the Direccion de Operacion de Sitios of the National Coordination of Archaeology, INAH, where she carries out functions related to the instrumentation and monitoring of the planning processes in heritage archaeological sites.
Yolanda Peláez Castellanos (2016-2019, 2022-2023)
Yolanda is an archaeologist who graduated from the Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP). She has participated in archaeological excavations in the highlands of central Mexico (Cholula, Tepeticpac) and also in Peru (San José de Moro, Huaca Pucllana). In 2016 she joined the Plaza of the Columns Complex Project in Teotihuacan and has performed excavation and topographic mapping activities throughout multiple field seasons (2016-2019). In addition, she has worked on the standardization of digital records and cataloging of different materials from the project.
Nora Rodríguez Zariñán (2016)
Nora graduated as an archaeologist from the National School of Anthropology and History where she developed her thesis project El conjunto iconográfico Águila-Rombo-Serpiente en Chalchihuites, Zacatecas. Her approximation method was an ethnographic analogy with the Huicholes.
As a continuation of this research, she pursued a master’s degree in Anthropology with a specialization in Ethnology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She received her degree with the research project La noción huichola de deidad y de persona. Nora currently teaches pre-Hispanic architecture.
Even further, Nora has participated in the organization of several academic meetings. In doing so, she is compiling and writing several articles on them for publication. From 2005 until now, her research interests have been focused on archaeology and iconography from northwestern Mexico, and she had been gaining fieldwork experience in the Sierra Huichola since 2012. Nora joined the Plaza of the Columns Complex Project with the aim to contribute to the project, and if applicable, analyze how ethnography can contribute to our understanding of the Teotihuacan City and Plaza of the Columns Project.
Christopher Schwartz (2016)
Christopher is an archaeologist and doctoral student studying at Arizona State University. He is interested in understanding the complex interactions that moved people, ideas, objects, and materials over long distances in the past. He has explored this question by studying the diverse interactions amongst pre-Hispanic societies of Mesoamerica and those in north and west Mexico and the United States Southwest, and how these interactions were both shaped and manipulated by these societies over time.
He is currently preparing his dissertation which will explore how pre-Hispanic people living in the northern Sinagua region near Flagstaff, Arizona, manipulated distant connections and utilized animals and materials procured directly from, or reminiscent of objects from, Mesoamerica and west Mexico in local relations. Christopher has also worked in other sites in Mexico, such as the Sun Pyramid at Teotihuacan, Northern Basin of Mexico near modern-day Tequixquiac, and Casas Grandes region in northern Chihuahua, as well as northwestern Spain.
Jeff Stanley (2016)
Jeff received B.A. degrees in Linguistics and Computer Science from Duke University where he developed a lifelong interest in writing and symbolic systems. After spending several years as a professional software developer and acquiring his M.S. in Computer Science, Jeff joined George Mason University to pursue his anthropological studies. He is particularly interested in the interaction between writing and art and its impact in prehistoric Mesoamerica. Participating in the Plaza of the Columns Complex Project at Teotihuacan has given him the opportunity to explore an ancient society where the existence of writing is still debated. For his thesis, he intends to continue the legacy of scholarship on symbolic systems at Teotihuacan by analyzing the iconography and spatial distribution of figurines uncovered by the project.
Miguel Ángel Vargas López (2016)
Miguel was part of the team excavating at Front A during the second field season.
María del Rocío Vera Flores (2016)
Rocío is an archaeologist who specializes in municipal development for heritage conservation in modern urban contexts. Since 2007, she has worked in the Tuxtlas region in southern Veracruz at a site called Piedra Labrada, better known as Estela 1. She received her B.A. in Archaeology from Universidad Veracruzana and her M.A. in Social Sciences from El Colegio Mexiquense in Toluca, State of Mexico. Her research interests include land use and value, public policies, urban planning, and irregular urbanization on protected archaeological Mexican sites. She joined the Plaza of the Columns Complex Project at Teotihuacan in 2016 where she has had the opportunity to learn about Teotihuacan urbanism and construction techniques.