MRP News

Welcome to Blue Creek

MRP welcomes some new student volunteers for this summer. Joining us are Kevin Daniels fromSan Francisco State in Session 2 and Andrew Maziarski, Rutgers University, in Session 3.

Welcome Barbara Hughes

Barbara Hughes will be joining the Blue Creek team this summer. She will be leading excavations on a small house mound in Rosiata. Her excavtion is located next to the road and will provide both valuable information about the settlement of Rosita as well as raising our profile with the community.

Check out the Staff Page for more on Barbara as well as other members of our research team.

Jason Barrett returns to Blue Creek.

Dr Jason Barrett will be returning to Blue Creek for the 2008 Field Season. He will lead a research team during the first two sessions in the summer of 2008 with the goals of (1) mapping Nojol Nah, (2) dating the construction of architecture in the site’s monumental precinct, and (3) dating the construction of field walls and evaluating their possible use as defensive features.

Dr. Barrett's full bio can be found here.

2008 Feild Season Dates

Here are the Session dates for the 2008 Blue Creek and Yaxunah Field Season.

Blue Creek

• Session 1: Monday May 26 - Sunday June 8
• Session 2: Monday June 9 - Sunday  June 22
• Session 3: Monday June 30 - Sunday July 13 
• Session 4: Monday July 14 - Sunday July 27

Yaxunah

• The Yaxunah Community Participation Experience volunteer schedule for 2008 runs from Monday, June 30 to Sunday, July 27th. You can sign up for any consecutive two, three, or four week session.

What is happening at Yaxunah.

Grace and I have just finished posting a new page for the "Yaxunah Community Participation Experience". Make sure that you check it out under the "Live in a Mayan Village" heading on the main MRP site. It is full of news on what has been happening in Yaxunah as well as Grace's future plans.

We also have listed the session dates for participation at Yaxunah.

Tim

Website Changes

If you are a long time visitor to the Maya Research Program website, you will have noticed a few changes. If you are new to us, then welcome, stay a while and read up on our new format.

The Blue Creek Project and Yaxunah Programs are now found under the "Excavate a Mayan City" and "Live in a Mayan Village" sections, and of course the MRP tours are in the "Tour the Mayan World" section. We have a new page dedicated tou our "Research Members". It can be found under the "about Us" section and contains detailed bios on our researchers including some of their future plans.

We no longer have a seperate Archives section. Our photo albums hqve been moved to their own section and we have removed the publications archive. In the future project publications will be made available here on the MRP Blog, Rather than on the main website.

Those are the major changes. Visit the blog regularly for news and tidbits about Blue Creek and Yaxunah. Or better yet, subscribe to our blog and put MRP on you home page or into your favorite news reader (see sidebar).

Tim