Tom Sever and Payson Sheets pointing out two parallel ancient footpaths. They date to AD 600-1300 and connect the cemetery at the top of the photo with a village far down to the right.
After teaching for 43 years in this wonderful department, I finally retired on 2 January. However, the retirement is only from teaching, thus giving me more time for research, travel, mid-week skiing (avoiding the horrible weekend traffic and lift lines), and some other pleasures. My most active research project is in Costa Rica, where last summer we discovered more ancient footpaths using hyperspectral satellite imagery provided by Dr. Tom Sever (NASA/UAH). We are now starting our second year of a 3-year National Science Foundation grant, and this coming summer we will excavate a 6m diameter house floor that dates to 1000 BC. We will take 100 samples for detailed organic residue analyses to find out what they were doing in and around that house.
Christine Dixon is co-Principal Investigator, and
Rachel Egan will use our data for her PhD dissertation. I do plan to return to Cerén, if and when the gang violence subsides. I am getting back into manufacturing obsidian and glass surgical blades, this time targeting skin surgery. I have formed a group including people from a Boulder engineering firm who are working toward mechanization of production, some people from the Business School, and a surgeon in Canada. Other fun things include extended travels with my wife Fran to Spain, Italy, the Dalmatian coast, Yucatan, the Caribbean, and maybe even Denver. And I am taking a History class focused on the Near East and Europe from 1000 BC to AD 1650. Another pleasure is writing, and I am finishing one book chapter on “Abundance at Cerén” and well into another on “Service Relationships and the Broader Economy at Cerén.” I will be co-authoring two journal articles with the paleoethnobotanist David Lentz this year. So maybe retirement won’t be too boring. We will see….
