David Michael Pendergast, (born 1934) is an American archaeologist, and is most famous for his work at

Altun Ha Altun Ha is the name given to the ruins of an ancient Maya city in Belize, located in the Belize District about north of Belize City and about west of the shore of the Caribbean Sea. The site covers an area of about . Stones from the ruins o ...

and

Lamanai Lamanai (from ''Lama'anayin'', "submerged crocodile" in Yucatec Maya) is a Mesoamerican archaeological site, and was once a major city of the Maya civilization, located in the north of Belize, in Orange Walk District. The site's name is pre-Colum ...

, Belize. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology in 1955 from the University of California, Berkeley, and earned his Ph.D. in 1961 at the University of California, Los Angeles, studying with Clement Meighan. He was later married to Elizabeth Graham, also a

Mesoamerican Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El S ...

Archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

Career

While pursuing his doctorate at UCLA, Pendergast became the Museum Curator in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah, where he later became Assistant Professor of Anthropology. In 1957, he conducted reconnaissance work and excavations at

Tikal Tikal (; ''Tik'al'' in modern Mayan orthography) is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. It is one of the largest archaeological sites and urban centers of the Pre-Col ...

, Guatemala, and in the following years supervised and excavated several sites throughout California, Mexico, Arizona, Utah, as well as Belize and later Cuba. He began excavations as field director of the

Royal Ontario Museum The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year ...

’s

Expedition in

British Honduras British Honduras was a Crown colony on the east coast of Central America — specifically located on the southern edge of the Yucatan Peninsula from 1783 to 1964, then a self-governing colony — renamed Belize from June 1973

in 1964.The ‘u lak Newsletter, Vol 1, No 2, 2002. Royal Ontario Museum. Excavations commenced at

after reconnaissance and test excavations were conducted by Pendergast in 1963, and excavation continued through 1971. In his excavations of Structure B4 he discovered several tombs, one of which was famously called the Sun God’s Tomb which yielded the Kinich Ahaw Jade Head which is the single largest piece of carved jade in MesoamericaNational Institute of Culture and History, Belize. http://www.nichbelize.org2005 Olga A. Yermakhanova. "Kingship, Structures and Access Patterns on the Royal Plaza at the Ancient Maya City of Altun Ha, Belize: the Construction of a Maya GIS." M.A. Thesis, Louisiana State University and a national symbol of Belize. Pendergast served as the acting Archaeological Commissioner of Belize in 1967. The following year (1968) he became the Associate Curator of the

(ROM), and in 1977, he became the Curator of the Department of New World Archaeology at ROM. Between 1974 and 1986, Pendergast directed the archaeological research projects at

, Belize, constructing the site’s chronology.1995 Joyce Marcus, "Where is Lowland Maya Archaeology Headed?" ''Journal of Archaeological Research'' 3(1):3-53 The site’s core was fully mapped in the first two field seasons. Preliminary excavations revealed the presence of a raised-field system immediately north of the site’s core, and excavations of Group N revealed much of the site’s early history Pendergast's excavations demonstrated continuous occupation at the site from the Middle Preclassic (900-400 B.C.), until A.D. 1675. Elizabeth Graham now runs the Lamanai Archaeological Project.The Lamanai Archaeological Project. https://people.uncw.edu/simmonss/Lamanai%20overview%20of%20LAP.htm From 1989-1993, Pendergast served on the editorial board of Ancient Mesoamerica, in 1992 as the Editor Designate of Latin American Antiquity, which he edited from 1993-1996, and from 1996-1999 served as Vice President of Collections and Research at ROM. He currently serves as the Adjunct Curator of the Ancient Americas at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Curator Emeritus at ROM, and is an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Archaeology at University College of London.

Awards

Fellow, Royal Society of Canada (Elected 1992)

Selected publications

1960 ''Distribution of metal artifacts in prehispanic Mesoamerica.'' Doctoral Dissertation. University of California, Los Angeles.
1967 ''Palenque: The Walker-Caddy Expedition to the Ancient Maya City, 1839-1840.'' University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
1969 ''Altun Ha: A Guidebook to the Ancient Maya Ruins.'' University of Toronto Press.
1969 ''The Prehistory of Actun Balam, British Honduras.'' Royal Ontario Museum Art and Archaeology Occasional Papers 16.
1969 ''Altun Ha, British Honduras (Belize): The Sun God’s Tomb.'' ROM Art and Archaeology Occasional Papers 19.
1970 ''A. H. Anderson’s Excavations at Rio Frio Cave E, British Honduras (Belize).'' ROM Art and Archaeology Occasional Papers 20.
1970 Excavations at Eduardo Quiroz Cave, British Honduras (Belize). ROM Art and Archaeology Occasional Papers 21.
1974 Excavations at Actun Polbilche, Belize. Royal Ontario Museum Archaeology Monographs 1.
1976 ''Altun Ha: A Guidebook to the Ancient Maya Ruins'' (Second Edition, Revised). University of Toronto Press.
1979 ''Excavations at Altun Ha, Belize, 1964-1970, Volume 1.'' Royal Ontario Museum.
1982 ''Ancient Maya Mercury''. Science 217:533-535.
1982 ''Excavations at Altun Ha, Belize, 1964-1970, Volume 2.'' Royal Ontario Museum.
1984 ''A Lexicon for Maya Architecture'' (second author with H. Stanley Loten). Royal Ontario Museum Archaeology Monographs 8.
1985 ''Under Spanish Rule: The Final Chapter in Lamanai's Maya History.'' Belcast Journal of Belizean Affairs 3(1&2):1-7. Belize College of Arts, Science, and Technology, Belize City.
1988 ''Lamanai Stela 9: The Archaeological Context.'' Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 20. Center for Maya Research, Washington, D.C.
1990 ''Excavations at Altun Ha, Belize, 1964-1970, Volume 3''. Royal Ontario Museum.
1998 ''The House in the Water.'' Rotunda 31(2):26-31.
2000 "The Maya World: Gains and Losses." ''Canadian Society of Decorative Arts Bulletin'' 18(1&2):12-13.
2002 "Temporal change, social structure and diet in the Altun Ha Maya" (third author with Christine White and Fred J. Longstaffe). ''Canadian Association for Physical Anthropology Newsletter'' 2002(1): 31.
2006 ''Reconstructing the Past: Studies in Mesoamerican and Central American Prehistory'', edited by David M. Pendergast and Anthony P. Andrews. BAR International Series 1529. BAR, Oxford.

Selected peer reviewed articles

1957 "Further Data On Pacific Coast Fired Clay Figurines." ''American Antiquity'' 23:178-180.
1967 "Altun Ha, Honduras Británica: Temporadas 1964 y 1965." ''Estudios de Cultura Maya'' VI:149-169.
1968 "Four Maya Pottery Vessels from British Honduras." ''American Antiquity'' 33:379-382.
1970 "Evidence of Early Teotihuacán-Lowland Maya Contact at Altun Ha." ''American Antiquity'' 36:455-460.
1981 "The 1980 Excavations at Lamanai, Belize." ''Mexicon'' 2:96-99.
1988 "Lamanai Tomb N9-56/1: Analysis of the Skeletal Evidence." (second author with Hermann Helmuth). ''Ossa'' 13:109-117.
1990 "Engineering Problems in Ancient Maya Architecture: Past, Present, and Future." ''Environmental Geology and Water Sciences'' 16(1):67-73
1995 "Looting the Maya World: The Other Losers." ''Public Archaeology Review'' 2(2):2-4.
2000 "Excavations at Los Buchillones, Cuba." (second author with Elizabeth Graham, Jorge Calvera, and Juan Jardines). ''Antiquity'' 74:263-264.
2002 "The Houses in Which They Dwelt: Excavation and Dating of Taino Wooden Structures at Los Buchillones, Cuba." (first author with Elizabeth Graham, Jorge Calvera R., and Juan Jardines M.) ''Journal of Wetland Archaeology'' 2:61-75.

Reference materials

1999 Holding Onto the Past: Maya Storytelling in Belize. In ''Traditional Storytelling Today: An International Sourcebook,'' edited by Margaret Read MacDonald, pp. 471-474. Fitzroy Dearborn, Chicago.
2001 ''Altun Ha (Belize, Belize)'' and ''Lamanai (Orange Walk, Belize)'' in Susan T. Evans and David L. Webster (eds.), ''Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America, An Encyclopedia'', pp. 19, 394. Garland Publishing, New York.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pendergast, David M. American archaeologists Living people 1934 births Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni Mesoamerican archaeologists University of Utah faculty