28/02/2023
Our last team member is a student from the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala.
My name is Diana Torres-Castillo. I was educated at Colegio Mixto Bilingüe Nuevo Amanecer, Guatemala, where I graduated with a Degree in Science and Letters, majoring in Computer Science.
I am currently in my fourth year of a Bachelor's Degree in Archaeology at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, from which I received an Academic Mention in 2020.
In the month of March I will be doing a field internship at the Xochi Project located in Mazatenango, Guatemala, where I will be developing activities such as reconnaissance and excavation.
I hope to specialize in lithic analysis and LiDAR management, the reason why I joined the Yaxha project.
23/02/2023
Today we want to introduce you to our Co-Chief Anthropologist officer.
My name is James Bacon and I am a British Citizen and Archaeologist with a BA from Reading University in 2016.
I have worked excavating in England, Spain and Belize doing volunteer, research and commercial archaeology.
Currently I am studying a Masters in Anthropology at Trent University, Canada, focusing on Maya.
I have work experience in Belize and Guatemala since 2017, combining GIS-survey, LiDAR ground-truthing and close collaboration with local people and communities from the area.
Overall I have spent more than a year physically working in Belize and Guatemala,
in four field seasons and through remote collaborations afterwards to analyse the
recorded data.
22/02/2023
Our next team member is our Chief Data Scientist and Medical Officer:
My name is Oliver Chapman and I’ll be coordinating the Technology and Artificial Intelligence aspects of the Guatemala Expedition. I’m a Ph.D. student at the University of Oxford studying Quantum Computing and I have a love of travelling, technology, and finding interesting ways to combine the two. During the expedition, I’ll be most focused on analyzing the rich data acquired by the drones to create colored 3D digital representations of the Mayan sites. I have previously been on expeditions to Madagascar and the Georgian Caucasus and am excited by the prospect of stepping foot in Mesoamerica.
19/02/2023
We have manage to fill in all the roles for our core team going to the field this summer! So during this week, we would like to introduce ourselves.
First... The Expedition Leader!
My name is Cristina Gonzalez-Esteban. I am a current Ph.D. student at the University of Oxford, Wolfson College. I am the Expedition Leader and will be in charge of the Archaeological research of the project, focusing on learning about the extent and settlement structure of the selected sites, South of Lake Yaxha in Guatemala using digital technologies.
I will work together with the remote sensing data collectors, defining the areas and extent of the airborne data. At the same time, I will also organize and lead the collection of terrestrial LiDAR data at the core of the selected sites. This step of the project aims to increase the current archaeological coverage through airborne LiDAR and increase the speed and effectiveness of its processing and interpretation to understand the human history of the area.
In addition, I am also part of the Artificial Intelligence Team, defining the parameters of the study from an archaeological point of view and establishing the "ground-proving" areas that will allow us to check the effectiveness and quality of the processed data using these technologies.
As one of the Spanish speakers of the team, I will also be responsible for establishing connections and communicating with the locals authorities, researchers, and universities.
13/02/2023
We are back on social media!! And we would like to introduce ourselves again
We are the Oxford University Expedition to Yaxha, a team of international academics made of Cristina Gonzalez-Esteban, Oliver Chapman, James Bacon and Diana Alejandra Torres Castillo. Over the coming months, we will be documenting our planning process in preparation for the expedition in June. Following that, we will post select snippets of our lives in the field.
As a summary, we are studying the impact and knowledge of Maya sites located south of Lake Yaxha in the Peten area of Guatemala. Our team will be using interdisciplinary methodologies in collaboration with local communities. We will be targeting overlooked medium and small-scale Maya sites by combining archaeological study, aerial drone (LiDAR) data collection, and ethnographic fieldwork.
We will be sharing much more in the coming weeks and months!
