During the month of June, Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology Andrew Scherer, Associate Professor of Anthropology Shanti Morell-Hart, and graduate student Moisés Herrera Parra (Moi) were in Chiapas, Mexico for fieldwork as part of the Proyecto Arqueológico Busiljá-Chocoljá (PABC). This work primarily involved establishing new connections with communities in the area to explore collaborations for future seasons of fieldwork. Several ancient settlements were first identified through a lidar remote sensing survey the team conducted around the time of the COVID pandemic. Some of the identified sites are located in close proximity to the expansive ancient agricultural fields identified during earlier lidar survey. Future work will continue to focus on these fields and the surrounding settlements to better understand the agricultural economy of precolonial Maya communities.

While much of the season was spent meeting with local stakeholders and conducting preliminary observations of the new sites, Andrew, Shanti, and Moi also briefly excavated a building damaged by unauthorized digging. Afterwards, other members of the research team consolidated the structure to prevent further damage. Meanwhile, in the field laboratory, Shanti and Moi extracted residues from artifacts recovered during the excavations, to identify agricultural products and food traces.