Claire Ebert

  • Assistant Professor

Claire Ebert is an environmental archaeologist whose research explores the long-term dynamics of human-environment interaction in Mesoamerica. Based on field work in western Belize, she examines the emergence of complexity and urbanism among the earliest Maya agricultural communities and the fluctuating environmental and climatic contexts in which they appeared. She is a co-director of the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance (BVAR) Project and offers graduate and undergraduate student research opportunities in the field in Belize and in the Mesoamerican Archaeology and Isotopic Sciences (MAIS) Lab in the Department of Anthropology at Pitt. Her current projects include tracing urban trajectories through lidar-based remote sensing, settlement survey, and excavation at the Maya polity of Yaxox in western Belize, investigating human–animal relationships in ancestral Maya communities, and conducting geochemical sourcing analyses of pottery and obsidian to reconstruct networks of interaction. She also contributes to collaborative, open-access initiatives such as CAMBIO (the Caribbean & Mesoamerica Biogeochemical Isotope Overview) and URBank, both open-access initiatives which advance comparative research on biogeochemistry and urban adaptation across regions and timescales, respectively.

Prospective Students

Current PhD students working in the MAIS Lab apply environmental archaeology, human ecology, and/or stable isotope analysis to research questions within Mesoamerican archaeology. Students are also welcome to design studies related to ongoing projects in the lab, focusing on questions about environmental change, diet, and commensal relationships between people, plants, and/or other animals in Mesoamerica or elsewhere in the ancient world.

 

Courses

  • Ancient Mesoamerica (taught annually in spring)
  • Introduction to Archaeology
  • Environmental Archaeology
  • Molecular Archaeology
  • Alcohol in the Ancient World (writing seminar)
  • Unraveling the Anthropocene
  • The Art of Publication (graduate seminar)
  • Anthropology of Economies (graduate seminar)

 

Selected Publications

You can find a full list of publications and links to the papers here.

Ebert, Claire E. Before the Collapse: Agricultural Risk Management and Resilience in the Preclassic Maya Lowlands. In, Dagomar Degroot, John McNeill, and Amy Hessel (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Handbook of Climate History and Resilience. Oxford University Press, Oxford. (In Press)

Ebert, Claire E., Julie A. Hoggarth, Jose Mes, Frank K. Tzib. Collaborations between Archaeologists, Local Communities, and Heritage Specialists for Climate Change Solutions in Belize. Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology 19: 49-59.

Ebert, Claire E., Sean W. Hixon, Gina M. Buckley, Richard J. George, Sofía Pacheco-Fores, Juan Manuel Palomo, Ashley E. Sharpe, Oscar R. Solís-Torres, J. Britt Davis, Doughlas J. Kennett, and Ricardo Fernandes. 20204. The Caribbean and Mesoamerica Biogeochemical Isotope Overview (CAMBIO). Scientific Data 11:349. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03167-6

Ebert, Claire E., James McGee, and Jaime J. Awe, 2021. Early Monumentality in the Belize River Valley: Excavations of a Preclassic E-Group at Cahal Pech, Belize. Latin American Antiquity 32:209-217.

Ebert, Claire E., Asta Rand, Kirsten Green-Mink, Julie A. Hoggarth, Carolyn Freiwald, Jaime J. Awe, Willa R. Trask, Jason Yaeger, M. Kathryn Brown, Christophe Helmke, Rafael Guerra, Marie Danforth and Douglas J. Kennett, 2021. Sulfur Isotopes as a Proxy for Human Diet and Mobility from the Preclassic through Colonial periods in the Eastern Maya Lowlands. PLoS ONE 16(8):e0254992. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254992

Ebert, Claire E., Julie A. Hoggarth, Brendan J. Culleton, Jaime J. Awe and Douglas J. Kennett, 2019. The role of diet in resilience and vulnerability to climate change among early agricultural communities in the Maya Lowlands. Current Anthropology 60(4):589-601.

Ebert, Claire E., Daniel Pierce and Jaime J. Awe, 2019. Preclassic ceramic economy in Belize: neutron activation analyses at Cahal Pech. Antiquity 93:1266-1283.

Ebert, Claire E., Nancy Peniche May, Brendan J. Culleton, Jaime J. Awe and Douglas J. Kennett, 2017. Regional response to drought during the formation and decline of Preclassic Maya societies. Quaternary Science Reviews 173:211-235.

Ebert, Claire E., Mark Dennison, Kenneth G. Hirth, Sarah B. McClure, Douglas J. Kennett. 15.20Formative Period obsidian exchange along the Pacific Coast of Mesoamerica. Archaeometry 57(S1):54–73.

Ebert, Claire E., Keith M. Prufer, Martha J. Macri, Bruce Winterhalder, Douglas J. Kennett. 2014. Terminal long count dates and the disintegration of Classic Period Maya polities. Ancient Mesoamerica 25:337–356.