Brigitte Kovacevich

Brigitte Kovacevich received her BA from the University of Arizona and PhD from Vanderbilt University in 2006. Before coming to University of Central Florida as Assistant Professor in 2015, she taught at Southern Methodist University, Yale University, and the University of Virginia.  She was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor at UCF in 2018.  Dr. Kovacevich is a Mesoamerican Archaeologist who works in Guatemala and focuses on the Maya.  Her great passion is for Household Archaeology and the investigation of how households were articulated with and foundational for larger social processes like the rise of social inequality, the maintenance of power, and collapse of political systems. She investigates these processes primarily through the analysis of stone tools and adornments with publications on jade production, distribution, and chemical composition with Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Trustees for Harvard University (in 2015 and 2021), Heritage Science, Ancient Mesoamerica, and Art of the Ancient Americas at the Dallas Museum of Art, edited by Michelle Rich published by Yale University Press.  Kovacevich has co-directed a project at the Maya site of Holtun, Guatemala investigating the origins of social complexity that resulted in publications in PLOS ONE, Journal of Archaeological Research: Reports, Advances in Archaeological Practice.  She currently co-directs a project analyzing lidar data from over 500km2 of the landscape within the Maya Biosphere in Guatemala as part of the Pacunam Lidar Initiative.  Her work has been funded by the National Geographic Society and National Science Foundation, American Philosophical Society, Pacunam, among others.