Lisa LeCount
Lisa LeCount (PhD UCLA, 1996) is a Latin American archaeologist who specializes in preColumbian pottery. She has conducted field investigations in Peru, Ecuador and Belize, and is currently involved in research at two Classic-period lowland Maya sites: Xunantunich and Actuncan. At Xunantunich, her research focuses on the complex relationships between wealth, social status, and political power in ancient state-level societies. Although prestige goods should be a good index of status, their production and circulation are heavily influenced by their role as political currency.
Currently, she is the principal investigator of the Actuncan Archaeological Project that examines the rise of hereditary kingship during the Preclassic to Classic transition (B.C. 400 to A.D. 600), and the role households played in processes leading to centralized authority. Excavations of domestic structures and a Maya palace at the site of Actuncan will document changing residential layout and size, domestic activities, and access to utilitarian and luxury goods in order to understand the degree to which rulers consolidated political, social, economic and ideological power. It is proposed that local rulers at smaller polities like Actuncan were unable to consolidate power over households during this transition, and kin-based authority remained well-developed into the Late Classic period.
Dr. LeCount is a strong advocate of the four fields approach in anthropology, and her archaeology classes emphasize the use of cultural, biological, and linguistic data to lend support for archaeological models concerning ancient human behavior. She has worked in the American Southwest and California where she has excavated Mogollon pithouse villages and Mimbres pueblos, and surveyed in Wupakti and Bandelier National Monuments and San Clemente Island as a member of federal and private (CRM) projects.
Dr. LeCount is the 2003 winner of the American Anthropological Association's Gordon R. Willey Award for achievement in archaeology.
Contact Dr. LeCount at: llecount@as.ua.edu
Office: 25-D ten Hoor Hall
Phone: (205) 348-3733
2005 | LeCount L. Continuity and Change in the Ceramic Complex at Xunantunich, Belize. In Geographies of Power: Understanding the Nature of Terminal Classic Pottery in the Maya Lowlands. Edited by Sandra Lopez Varela and Antonia Foias. Monograph series. British Archaeological Reports. | |||
2005 | LeCount, L., and J. Blitz. The Actuncan Early Classic Maya Project: Progress Report on the Second Field Season. In Archaeological Investigations in the EAstern Maya Lowlands: Papers of the 2004 Belize Archaeology Symposium, edited by J. Awe, J. Morris, S. Jones, and C. Helmke. Institute of Archaeology, Belize, CA. | |||
2004 | LeCount, L. Looking for a Needle in a Haystack: The Early Classic Period at Actuncan. In Archaeological Investigations in the Eastern Maya Lowlands: Papers of the 2003 Belize Archaeology Symposium. Edited by Jaime Awe, John Morris, and Sherilyne Jones. Institute of Archaeology, Belize, CA. | |||
2002 | LeCount L., Jason Yaeger, Richard M. Leventhal, and Wendy Ashmore. Dating the Rise and Fall of Xunantunich, Belize: A Late and Terminal Classic Lowland Maya Secondary Center. Ancient Mesoamerica 13(1): 41-63. | |||
2001 | LeCount L. Like Water for Chocolate: Feasting and Political Ritual among the Late Classic Maya of Xunantunich, Belize. American Anthropologist 103(4): 935-953. | |||
1999 | LeCount L. Polychrome Pottery and Political Strategies among the Late and Terminal Classic Lowland Maya. Latin American Antiquity 10(3): 239-258. | |||
1991 | Hastorf, C., T.K. Earle, H.E. Wright Jr., L. LeCount, G. Russell, and E. Sandefur. Arqueologia De Jauja, Peru: Del Intermedio Temprano Al Intermedio Tardio (resultados de la temporada de campo 1986). Revista Arqueologia Y Sociedad 11. Universidad Nacional Major De San Marcos, Centro de Documentacion del Museo de Arqueologia y Etnologia, Lima. | |||
1989 | Hastorf, C., T. Earle, H.E. Wright Jr., G. Russell, L. LeCount, and E. Sandefur. Settlement archaeology in the Jauja region of Peru. Andean Past 2:81 - 130. |