PAPAC Team

Allan Maca (PhD, Harvard University, 2002) is the director of the Copan Urban Planning Project (PAPAC) and a professor of anthropology at Colgate University. He has conducted archaeological fieldwork in east and southern Africa, Israel, California, and Mesoamerica. In Honduras, at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Copan, he has directed research in the Comedero, Chorro, Las Sepulturas, and El Bosque sectors of the ancient city. He is interested in indigenous models for ancient urban plans, the settlement history of ancient Copan beyond the Principal Group (city center), and problems and solutions related to the growth of the modern town and the destruction of Copan's ruins--how can the concerns for an ancient city and the needs of a modern city work towards the same goals? Maca is involved with large scale conservation concerns in the Copan Valley, studies of Honduran identity and heritage and its relationship to archaeology, and with the history of method and theory in American archaeology. At Colgate he teaches courses in anthropology, archaeology, ancient and modern Mexico and Mesoamerica, and Native American Studies. (amaca[at]mail[dot]colgate[dot]edu)

Shannon Plank (PhD, Boston University, 2003) is an assistant director of PAPAC and a research associate at Boston University. She has worked on buffalo jump sites in the Great Plains and on Maya sites in Belize and Honduras. Plank is a specialist in Mayan hieroglyphics and is especially concerned with the relationship between epigraphy and archaeology. Plank supervised the area of Group 11K-6 where Tomb 1 was found in March 2005. (plank[at]bu[dot]edu)

Greogorio Perez is an archaeologist and technical artist from the town of Copan Ruinas, Honduras. He and Allan Maca have worked together for a total of six years since 1997. Perez is an assistant director of PAPAC and brings experience from work on virtually every archaeological project conducted in the Copan Valley since the early 1990s. He supervised the excavations of Structure 29 at Group 11K-6 and is responsible for all the scale architectural drawings of Tomb 1. Perez also manages the PAPAC lab in Copan and coordinates all site security, data archiving, and the lab work of Honduran students and interns.(goyo_butzchanm[at]yahoo[dot]com)

Marc Wolf (MA, Boston University, 1998) is a professional cartographer and is responsible for the complete remapping of the El Bosque sector of Copan between 2005 and 2007. He has worked or currently works on Maya sites in Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, and Honduras and with Maca is engaged in an effort (as part of PAPAC) to completely remap the ancient city of Copan. Wolf has considerable experience in contract archaeology. He wrote his masters thesis on the history of mapping methods in Maya archaeology. (gwe[at]mindspring[dot]com)

Clement Valla (MFA candidate, Rhode Island School of Design; BA, Columbia University, 2001) is a Digital Media Artist from New York. He has collaborated on many projects in a variety of fields, including landscape architecture, architecture, photography, webdesign, installation design, film and video, and now archaeology. He has worked in the USA, Europe, China and Central America. He is currently the media director for PAPAC, and is studying new methods of applying digital media to archaeological research, education, and conservation. (clementvalla[at]runbox[dot]com)

Katherine Miller (MA, Arizona State University, 2006; BA, Indiana University, 2003) is a bioarchaeologist pursuing doctoral research at Arizona State University. Katie has worked in Chau Hiix, Belize (2003) and Copan, Honduras (2004-present). She is currently the human bone specialist for PAPAC, but has also lent her expertise to other projects at Copan. Since 2004 she also has supervised the complete cataloguing and re-housing of the human bone collection at Copan--one of the largest collections in the Americas. Her current research interests focus on understanding ancient Maya identity and social organization in the Copan and Motagua Valleys through biological traits and biogeochemistry in human remains. (kmiller[at]asu[dot]edu)

Kristin Landau (BA, Colgate University, 2007) has worked in both the field and the lab with PAPAC since 2005. She is a seasoned excavator and student of Copan ceramics and has pursued extensive archaeoastronomy studies of the Great Plaza stelae at Copan. Kristin recently received high honors for her senior thesis on the relationship between archaeology and archaeoastronomy; she focused on Copan and enjoyed direction provided by Professor Anthony Aveni of Colgate University. (kvlandau[at]gmail[dot]com)

Gustavo Arias is from the town of Copan Ruinas and is currently finishing his studies at the local colegio where he is an honors student. Tavo is a technical artist for PAPAC, specializing in artifacts and more recently in field drawings.