Trent University Anthropology Professor Receives Funding for Research at Ancient Maya Site in Belize, Central America

Dr. Helen Haines to receive $20,000 through a prestigious grant from the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration

Friday, May 30, 2014, Oshawa, ON

Trent University Oshawa professor Dr. Helen Haines has received a coveted $20,000 grant from the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration in support of her excavation project work at the ancient Maya site of Ka’Kabish in Belize, Central America.

Professor Haines, who teaches anthropology at Trent and is a research fellow of the Trent University Archaeological Research Centre (TUARC), has been conducting research on Maya culture in northern Belize for 25 years. She is currently the director of the Ka’Kabish Archaeological Research Project (KARP), which is focused on understanding the development of social stratification and its transformative role in the development of early states. Prof. Haines was thrilled to learn that she and her team will receive funding from the National Geographic Society, stating that the grant will provide immense help with both support of student research and project infrastructure.

“I am deeply honoured to be receiving a National Geographic Society grant,” said Prof. Haines. “I remember reading National Geographic journals as a child, and to think that I might one day be featured in one of their volumes is a dream come true.”

Joe Muldoon, head of Trent University Oshawa, noted that Trent has a thirty-year history of archaeological research in Belize with Professor Paul Healy. “Prof. Helen Haines continues this tradition of excellence, and this recent grant from the National Geographic Society will help support her outstanding research program involving both undergraduate and graduate students,” Mr. Muldoon said.

Prof. Haines’s dream of becoming an archaeologist began when she found a book about Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of Troy in the library of her elementary school. “I fell in love with the idea that someone could read about one of these myths and then actually go and find it,” she said. As an undergraduate at the University of Toronto in 1990, she participated in her first field trip to Belize and was fascinated by the possibilities. She now spends part of each year directing her own excavation project at Ka’Kabish. “It’s like watching a city coming back to life,” she said.

Along with a team of graduate and undergraduate students and local workers, Prof. Haines is examining archaeological evidence from Ka’Kabish, dating from 800-400 BC to AD 900-1100. Their research focuses on the political formation and dynamics of early states: how they emerged, and how groups were integrated into larger political landscapes. Artifacts found during excavations can contribute to archaeologists’ knowledge of many aspects of a site, from the status of its residents to political boundaries.

“What we’re hoping to show is a better understanding of how this site relates politically and economically to cultural zones to the west and east,” Prof. Haines said. “It will help us clarify those relationships that our site had with those other communities.”

Prof. Haines obtained her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Toronto and her Ph.D. from the Institute of Archaeology, University of London, England, in 2000. She also held a three-year Post-Doctoral research appointment in the Department of Anthropology at The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL.

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