Middle American Research Institute

08/26/2026

For decades, this city existed only in fragments.

Looted stone panels, scattered across museums and private collections worldwide. No record of where any of it came from.

Then in 1996, someone found the place it came from.

Sak Nikte' (La Corona, Guatemala) turned out to be one of the most historically rich sites in the Classic Maya world — a key node in the powerful Kaanul (Snake) dynasty, full of hieroglyphic records, royal burials, and political intrigue.

This February, the people who pieced it back together come to New Orleans.

21st Annual Tulane Maya Symposium & Workshops
Feb 18–20, 2027 · tms.tulane.edu
tulane ·

08/18/2026

Join us Friday, August 28th at noon in 305 Dinwiddie Hall for our first Lunch Talk of the semester!

About the speaker:
Nathanael Heller, M.A., R.P.A. has worked for the past 30+ years as a professional archaeologist. Although originally trained in the Near East and having worked on archaeological sites of Jezreel and Dothan in Israel, Nathanael has since shifted his focus to the archaeology of the southeastern United States. His first experiences with U.S. archaeology came in 1994 when he participated in a series of large excavations in Mississippi and Florida for the FGT Phase III pipeline project. After stints with the Louisiana Division of Archaeology and the Louisiana State Museum and completion of his Master's degree, Nathanael was hired by Goodwin & Associates to run their New Orleans archaeology lab. Nathanael now serves as Senior Research Archaeologist for Goodwin and oversees projects across the eastern U.S. Nathanael grew up in Kenner and lives in Metairie with his family.

Abstract:
Between 2011 and 2013, R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates, Inc. completed a two-year study of the Tchefuncte culture in coastal Louisiana. This effort included the analysis of previously excavated materials from the Bayou Jasmine (16SJB2), Tchefuncte (16ST1), Little Woods (16OR1-4), and Lafayette Mounds (16SM17) sites. Much of the material examined for this study originated from Depression-era excavations conducted by the FERA and WPA between 1934 and 1942, which formed the basis for James Ford and George Quimby's classic 1945 WPA monograph on the Tchefuncte culture. The study also included materials from the Bayou Jasmine Site that were recovered by an LSU field crew in 1975, and a small collection of materials from an LAS field school excavation at the Tchefuncte Site in 1986.
Foremost of the accomplishments of this study was to provide comprehensive descriptions of the Tchefuncte, Bayou Jasmine, Lafayette Mounds and Little Woods sites, and analyses of the data from the excavation of these sites. The discussions of these individual sites included examinations of excavation histories, site structure, stratigraphy, chronology, and artifact distribution, whenever possible. Some of the more important results included recognition of discrete activity areas within Midden A at the Tchefuncte Site, a proposed resolution of site chronology at the Bayou Jasmine Site, and confirmation of an Early Woodland date for Mound 1 at the Lafayette Mounds Site.

05/09/2026

Interested in archaeological science but not sure where to start?

The Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) is excited to announce our Archaeometry Workshop for Mesoamerican Archaeologists, taking place November 9–13, 2026 in Columbia, Missouri.

This hands-on workshop introduces participants to archaeological science methods including:
• Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA)
• XRF
• Mass Spectrometry
• Raman Spectroscopy
• Petrography

Through lectures, lab tours, and practical activities, participants will explore how these methods can support their own archaeological research.

• Open to graduate students and early-career scholars in Mesoamerican archaeology
• International applicants are encouraged
• No registration fee
• Selected participants receive travel support, housing options, and meal stipends

Applications due: May 30, 2026

Scan the QR code in the flyer to apply or use this link: https://forms.gle/AhZLQEXV1xPP3q5p7

Contact Whitney Goodwin at [email protected] for more information.

04/22/2026

Don't forget to submit your application for internships at MARI! Due April 27th!

Internship applications for Fall 2026 are OPEN!
Our M.A.R.I Internship program offers students a chance for hands-on research specific to their interests across a range of disciplines! Our application deadline for Fall semester is April 27th, make sure you get your application in before then! We look forward to working with you
https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/mari/outreach/get-involved

04/09/2026

04/07/2026

Internship applications for Fall 2026 are OPEN!
Our M.A.R.I Internship program offers students a chance for hands-on research specific to their interests across a range of disciplines! Our application deadline for Fall semester is April 27th, make sure you get your application in before then! We look forward to working with you
https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/mari/outreach/get-involved

04/02/2026

Thank you so much to everyone who came out to the Tulane Maya Symposium 2026, all of our speakers, workshop leaders made this such an incredible and informative time. A special thank you to our collaborators and sponsors New Orleans Museum of ArtConsulado de México en Nueva OrleansRuta Maya CoffeeNew Orleans Hispanic Heritage Foundation and the Latin American Graduate Organization at Tulane we couldn't have had as fun or successful event without the help of so many people, we hope to see you all next year!

04/01/2026

Please join us this Friday April 3rd for our next Lunch Talk featuring Miruna Achim!

Her talk will be on her current work which reconstructs the uses of Mesoamerican jade – a mineral rich with meanings in ancient Mesoamerica – as an object of art, science, politics, and commerce since the Spanish conquest. Placing jade’s material properties --color, texture, translucence, hardness, chemistry-- at the center of analysis, she explores how changing perceptions of matter have shaped interactions with the stone and among the people who extract, work, traffic, collect and study it. Building on the premise that jade is not an ontologically fixed essence, she asks, first, how its uses have been produced and translated over time between linguistic, geographic and cultural borders. Second, about the conceptual and political arrangements that sustain a differential production of knowledge and ignorance, making it possible for certain narratives of the stones’ uses to become prominent, while the violence pending on their extraction has been opaqued. Jade functions as a site for inquiring into the ways in which the Mesoamerican past and material cultures have been incorporated into global histories and into the relations of contemporary Amerindian communities with transregional economic and political actors. By delving into the uses of a stone, she asks how Mesoamerican material culture and its circulations still haunt, affect, and inspire contemporary contexts worldwide.