Harper Dine & Traci Ardren

Harper Dine is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Brown University. She uses archaeological and paleoethnobotanical methods to investigate ancient Maya foodways and agricultural strategies in the northern lowlands. Her dissertation research centers on the relationship between broader political and economic landscapes and local household food production and consumption in the Classic period. She is also interested in present-day socialities of food, food movements, and food security.

 Traci Ardren is an anthropological archaeologist who focuses on issues of identity and other forms of symbolic representation in the archaeological record, especially the ways in which differences are explained through gender. Her current preoccupations include the role of cuisine in identity formation in the later periods of Classic Maya culture and prehistoric southern Florida, as well as the ways plants agitate humans. Traci co-directs the Yaxuna-Coba Sacbe Project, centered at the Classic Maya site of Yaxuna, in Yucatan, Mexico where she investigates the ways ancient road systems allowed for the flow of information and ideas as well as how culinary tourism and modern foodways intersect.