Dr. Gabriel Wrobel, Co-director

Dr. Wrobel is a professor at the University of Mississippi specializing in bioarchaeology. He recently worked as the co-director of the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project with Jaime Awe, the director of Belize's National Institute of Archaeology. Other projects in which he has been involved include Carson Mounds (Mississippi), Chau Hiix (northern Belize), Hierakonpolis (Egypt), and most recently a new project in Kyrgyzstan (Central Asia). His research with the CBAS project focuses on documenting the many cave and rockshelter mortuary sites and seeks to answer the current debate over the nature of these deposits, specifically whether these interments were sacrificial victims or revered ancestors. The approach integrates data from other, non-mortuary cave sites and settlement in the area, to determine the reasons for changes in ritual, particularly in the closing years of the Classic period.



Dr. Christopher Andres, Co-director

Dr. Andres is a professor at Indiana University - Fort Wayne. He has been involved in archaeology since 1992 and has been conducting field research in Central America since 1996. His doctoral fieldwork focused on the relationship between changing architectural patterns and sociopolitical organization at the ancient Maya center of Chau Hiix, Belize. In addition to his involvement in Mesoamerican archaeology, he has participated in cultural resource management and archaeological research in the American midwest, southwest, and southeast. His current research interests include the built environment, spatial analysis, Maya ceramics, urbanism, the rise and fall of ancient civilizations, and the role of monumental architecture in sociopolitical transformations in complex societies. As co-director of the Caves Branch Archaeological Survey Project, he is particularly interested in developing an improved understanding of sociopolitical patterns (reflected at the valley’s surface sites) that will allow for comparison with ancient communities in better understood areas of the southern lowlands in the period leading up to the so-called Classic Maya “collapse.”


Jason J. González

Jason González is an adjunct professor at the University of Georgia. He has been involved in archaeology research in Mesoamerica since 1992. His doctoral fieldwork focused on the relationship of community domestic landscapes and their relationship to larger power structures in the Three Rivers Region of northwestern Belize. Much of that work entailed extensive mapping and surveying and less extensive domestic house excavations at two different communities, La Milpa and Ixno’ha. In addition to his involvement in Mesoamerican archaeology, he has participated in cultural resource management and archaeological research in the midwestern, northeastern, and southeastern United States as well as on the other side of the Pacific Rim in Micronesia. His current research interests include the built environment, political and ritual landscapes, political and social organization, human/environmental dynamics, domestic landscapes, and the negotiation of daily power relationships. As a member of the Caves Branch Archaeological Survey Project, he is particularly interested in looking at how a political landscape grew within the context of the Terminal Classic transition and how these political and social changes impacted the inhabitants ways of interacting and experiencing their environments.




Shawn Morton, Graduate Assistant

Shawn is a Ph.D. student at the University of Calgary, Canada, specializing in the patterned use of space, and the built environment. Recent projects include the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project and the Mopan Valley Archaeological Project, both in Belize. Other projects in which he has been involved include the Santa Isabelle Project (Nicaragua) and the Naachtun Project (Guatemala). Shawn has worked annually as an archaeological consultant in Canada since 1999. His research focus, with the CBAS project is the identification and characterization of ritual deposits and their contexts in deep cave environments. His study, documenting several multi-component cave sites in the region, seeks to identify the spatial and experiential characteristics that make specific loci appropriate choices for ritual activity. Shawn also enjoys long walks on the beach and piña coladas…he doesn’t think that they are a girl drink at all…



Rebecca Shelton, Lab Director

Rebecca Shelton recently completed her MA at UT Arlington, Texas. Her thesis provided a detailed contextual analysis of a Preclassic feasting deposit from Blackman Eddy, Belize. In addition to her work in the fields of art conservation and collections management, she has worked as a Project Archaeologist with AR Consultants, Inc., a CRM firm located in Dallas, Texas since 2006. Here, she conducts linear and large area surveys and her focus is on occupation patterns during
the Late Archaic and Late Prehistoric periods in the Southern High Plains. For the CBAS project, she participated in preliminary ceramic analysis in 2007, and seeks to expand her research to determine the role of vessels placed within caves, specifically the dual role that vessels represent in ritual contexts. Through her research on feasting deposits, she has recognized that vessels transform meaning from simple storage and service containers to corporeal offerings, and seeks to explore evidence of other transformations vessels may have represented in cave deposits.



Cameron Howell, Jr. Staff

Cameron Howell has worked across the Southeast USA in CRM for the past 10 years and has accumulated a wide range of survey, excavation, and laboratory experience including work in caves and rockshelters. Cameron is currently pursuing a Masters degree at Ole Miss where he is developing a thesis on improving the sampling strategies used in CRM. His other interests include ceramic analysis, the Woodland and Mississippian periods of the Southeast, and database creation and integration.







Former Staff:

Jillian Jordan has been involved in Belize archaeology for the past four years after joining BVAR in 2005 as a field school student. Since that time she has worked in Belize at the sites of Caves Branch Rockshelter, Cahal Pech, Deep Valley, and Baking Pot, as well as at various sites in Mississippi, Colorado and Wyoming. She received an MA in 2008 from The University of Mississippi. Her thesis was a report on survey and excavations at Baateelek, the largest plaza grouping at the site of Deep Valley. Current research interests include Late/Terminal Classic polity interactions, the Maya “collapse”, and the built environment as a unit of analysis. Jill has recently discovered a fascination with ceramics and feels compelled to study them in the future.

Jessica Hardy recently completed her Masters degree in Anthropology at the University of Mississippi in 2009. Her thesis research focused on the spatial and temporal variation in patterns of rockshelter appropriation in the Caves Branch River Valley incorporating data from Deep Valley Rockshelter, Caves Branch Rockshelter, and four other rockshelters in the region surrounding these sites. She conducted this research while working under Drs. Jaime Awe and Gabriel Wrobel of the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project from 2005 - 2007. She has also worked on projects in the Southeastern U.S. with the University of Mississippi Center for Archaeological Research and the Idalion Project at the Idalion site in Dhali, Cyprus.

Bryan Haley is a research associate and coordinator of remote sensing applications at the University of Mississippi Center for Archaeological Research, and is a host of the PBS series "Time Team America." His primary interests are geophysical techniques (including magnetics, electrical imaging, electromagnetics, and ground penetrating radar) and how these tools can make cultural resource and research archaeology more efficient. His other interests include airborne remote sensing, land surveying, geographic information systems, the global positioning system, and computer applications. His education includes a Bachelor of Science in Anthropology and a minor in Computer Science from the University of Kentucky in 1999 and a Master of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Mississippi in 2002. His work in Belize began as a student in 1998, where he worked at a number of cave and surface sites with the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project. Beginning in 2005, he conducted geophysical surveys at a number of sites, including Xunantunich, Cahal Pech, Pook’s Hill, Cave’s Branch, and Buena Vista.