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 lowland Maya sites: Xunantunich and Actuncan. Her research focuses on the complex relationships between wealth, social status, and political power in 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.
With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Lisa LeCount and a team of colleagues and graduate students are conducting three field seasons of archaeological research at the ancient Maya site of Actuncan, Belize (2010-2012). The Actuncan Archaeological Project is designed to examine the rise of hereditary kingship and how processes that led to centralized authority affected households during the Preclassic to Classic transition (B.C. 400 to A.D. 550). A household approach to understanding the rise of Maya kingship is rarely explored, since most researchers investigating this question focus predominately on the monuments and tombs of rulers. The actions of rulers, however, cannot be fully understood without investigating early households that held kin-based power through their control of land, labor and ancestral sources of religious authority. As independent sources of power, households may have been major stumbling blocks for rulers’ ambitions unless rulers were able to co-opt kin-based authority through innovative practices that forged a strong political identity across households and established a new moral order that superseded household authority. The degree to which leaders were successful in centralizing authority through these means should be reflected in shifting household prosperity, organization, and activities.
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.
Contact Dr. LeCount at: llecount@as.ua.edu
Office: 25-D ten Hoor Hall
Phone: (205) 348-3733
Selected Publications
2010 | LeCount, Lisa J. Maya Palace Kitchens: Suprahousehold Food Preparation at the Late Classic Maya Site of Xunantunich. In Inside Ancient Kitchens: New Directions in the Study of Daily Meals and Feasts, edited by Elizabeth Klarich, pp. 133-162. University of Colorado Press, Boulder. | |||
2010 | LeCount, Lisa J. and Jason Yaeger (Editors). Classic Maya Provincial Politics: Xunantunich and its Hinterlands. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. | |||
2010 | LeCount, Lisa J. Mount Maloney People? Domestic Pots, Every Day Practice, and the Social Formation of the Xunantunich Polity. In Classic Maya Provincial Politics: Xunantunich and its Hinterlands. Edited by Lisa J. LeCount and Jason Yaeger, pp. 209-232. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. | |||
2010 | LeCount, Lisa J., and Jason Yaeger. Provincial Politics and Current Models of the Lowland Maya State. In Classic Maya Provincial Politics: Xunantunich and its Hinterlands. Edited by Lisa J. LeCount and Jason Yaeger, pp. 20-45. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. | |||
2010 | LeCount, Lisa J., and Jason Yaeger. Placing Xunantunich and Its Hinterland Settlements in Perspective. In Classic Maya Provincial Politics: Xunantunich and its Hinterlands. Edited by Lisa J. LeCount and Jason Yaeger, pp. 337-369. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. | |||
2010 | Leventhal, Richard M., Wendy Ashmore, Lisa J. LeCount and Jason Yaeger. The Xunantunich Archaeological Project, 1991-1997. In Classic Maya Provincial Politics: Xunantunich and its Hinterlands. Edited by Lisa J. LeCount and Jason Yaeger, pp. 1-19. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. | |||
2010 | VandenBosch, Jon., Lisa J. LeCount, and Jason Yaeger. Integration and Interdependence: The Domestic Economy of the Xunantunich Polity. In Classic Maya Provincial Politics: Xunantunich and its Hinterlands. Edited by Lisa J. LeCount and Jason Yaeger, pp. 272-294. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. | |||
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. Full text pdf available. | |||
2004 | LeCount L. Looking for a Needle in a Haystack: The Early Classic Period at Actuncan, Cayo District. Research Reports in Belizean Archaeology (1): 27-36. Full text pdf available. | |||
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. Winner of the American Anthropological Association's Gordon R. Willey Award. | |||
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. |