Lisa LeCount (PhD UCLA, 1996) is a Latin American archaeologist who specializes in preColumbian pottery. She has conducted field investigations in several Latin American countries, including Peru, Ecuador, and Belize, and is currently involved in research at the Late to Terminal Classic (A.D. 700 - 1000) lowland Maya site of Xunantunich. LeCount’s research focuses on the complex relationships between wealth, social status, and political power in ancient state-level societies. Her study of decorated pottery found that although prestige goods should be a good index of status, their production and circulation are heavily influenced by their role as political currency. The illustration at the lower left is a Pabellon Molded-Carved sherd dating to the Terminal Classic. This exceptional vessel, one of the finest found at the site, was recovered from a middle class household and attests to the fact that prestige goods were exchanged widely during a time when lowland Maya states, such as Tikal, were in decline. She suggests that local Xunantunich leaders gifted fancy imported pottery, like the one illustrated, to middle class families in order to maintain community solidarity and keep the polity from collapsing. 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. In addition to interests in Latin America, LeCount has worked in the American Southwest and California where she has excavated Mogollon pithouse villages, Mimbres pueblos, and El Rey Ignesia, and surveyed in Wupakti and Bandelier National Monuments and San Clemente Island as a member of federal and private (Cultural Resource Management) projects. She enjoys cooking and eating ethnic food and drink, especially when they are prepared and served in traditional ways.

Dr. LeCount is the 2003 winner of the American Anthropological Association's Gordon R. Willey Award for achievement in archaeology.

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Selected Publications and Papers

2003   Continuity and Change in the Ceramic Complex at Xunantunich, Belize. In Terminal Classic Socioeconomic Processes in the Maya Lowlands Through a Ceramic Lens.  Edited by Sandra López Varela and Antonia Foias.  Monograph series.  British Archaeological Reports.

2002    (LeCount, Lisa, 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   Like Water for Chocolate: Feasting and Political Ritual among the Late Classic Maya of Xunantunich, Belize.  American Anthropologist 103(4): 935-953.

1999   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.

Electronic Course Materials and Syllabi for Dr. LeCount