Meet the Project Team

Dr. Diana K. Moreiras Reynaga is a Mesoamerican Bioarchaeologist, originally from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. She received her BA (2010) and MA (2013) in Anthropology at The University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada). In 2019, she received her PhD in Anthropology (Bioarchaeology) at The University of Western Ontario (London, Canada). In 2015, Dr. Moreiras Reynaga was awarded the prestigious Vanier Scholarship (Government of Canada) to support her doctoral research. Her main research interest and expertise involve the study of diets and residential histories of Mesoamerican populations (including sacrificial victims) using bio-geochemical and -molecular methods such as stable isotope analysis and proteomics. Dr. Moreiras Reynaga is currently an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. Dr. Moreiras currently serves as the Regional Coordinator for Mexico and Central America of the “IsoArcH” Association and Database.

Kendra Chritz is an Assistant Professor of Geochemistry in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia. She also runs the light stable isotope facility housed within the Pacific Centre for Isotopic and Geochemical Research (PCIGR). Kendra’s research group focuses on exploring mammal and ancient human diets through time using stable isotope geochemistry, including developing new geochemical methods to explore food webs and complex human dietary patterns in the past. Some of the other ongoing projects in her research group involve human-environment interactions during the spread of food production in eastern Africa, food web dynamics of ancient human ancestors (hominins), and dietary evolution of mammals that survived the K-Pg Mass Extinction Event 65 million years ago.

Scott Blumenthal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon (UO), and a Research Associate in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia (UBC). At UO, he directs the Isotopic Paleoecology Lab and is co-Director of the Stable Isotope Laboratory. His research is mainly focused on investigating the ecology of people and other mammals. The UO stable isotope lab supports a variety of stable isotope studies, including in situ microanalysis of teeth using a custom-built laser ablation system coupled to an isotope ratio mass spectrometer.

Is currently the director of The Great Temple Project and a senior research professor at the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City. He has a bachelor's degree in archaeology from Mexico National School of Anthropology and History and a doctorate from the University of Paris-Nanterre.

His research focuses on the religion, politics and art of pre-Columbian societies in Central Mesoamerica. He has authored and coauthored 21 books and essays, and more than 270 chapters and articles, and has edited or coedited 23 collective works.In his academic career he has served as a visiting professor at the Sapienza University in Rome, the Sorbonne and the Practical School of Advanced Studies in Paris. He has also been a visiting scholar at Princeton University, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Museum of Branly Quay.

His distinctions include three Mexican Committee of Historical Science Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the French Institute of Advanced Studies. In 2015 he received in China the Shanghai Archaeology Forum Award as the director of one of the ten best archaeological research programs in the world. In recent times he received the Honorary Doctorate from the University of Copenhagen, he was appointed for the Government of France as a Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honour, and he has been elected as a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, The Royal Academy of History in Madrid, the American Academy the Arts & Sciences, and the French Academy of Inscriptions.

Is professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in Mexico City. She is an author and teaches courses at the Masters and doctoral level in the Postgraduate Program of Mesoamerican Studies at UNAM. She holds a PhD in History from the Ca'Foscary University of Venice, Italy and from the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, France (2012). She has completed three postdoctoral stays, two at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium (2013-2014 and 2017). She is author of the books Lieux de culte et parcours cérémoniels dans les fêtes des vingtaines à Mexico-Tenochtitlan. (British Archaeological Reports, Oxford 2014) and coordinator and co-coordinator of the volumes Vous n´em mangerez point. L'alimentation comme distinction religieuse (Editions de l'Université the Bruxelles, 2020) and Mesoamerican Rituals and the Solar Cycle. New Perspectives on the Veintena Festivals (with Élodie Dupey García, Peter Lang, 2021). She is the author of articles and book chapters published in Mexico, Europe, and the United States. Her topics of study are pre-Hispanic Nahuatl culture and religion, in particular solar year festivals and food. Since 1993 she has been responsible for the PAPITT project “Food and sacrifice in Mesoamerica and the Andean Area (XIV-XVI centuries)”, which involves specialists in different disciplines belonging to the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the UNAM, the University of British Columbia and the Université de Paris-Nanterre.

Academia.edu page: https://unam1.academia.edu/ElenaMazzetto

Archaeologist from the National School of Anthropology and History. Master’s degree in Anthropology from the Graduate Program of Anthropology at UNAM with the title project: Diet, provenance and migration of sgraffito skulls from Casa del Mendrugo, Puebla based on analysis with stable isotopes. Currently candidate for a PhD from the UNAM Post-Graduate in Anthropology with the project Residence, migration and feeding of the old population of Tancama, based on stable isotopy and radiogenic. Her professional work has focused mainly on bioarchaeological study of ancient populations, anthropology of death, osteological analysis and archaeometric analysis (stable isotopes).

He obtained a PHD in archeology for the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico City. Member of the National Research System (SNI) level 2. Researcher in archeology for the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia since 2004. He is currently a member of the Archaeology, Research and General Advisory Councils of INAH.

Over the last three decades, he conducted multiple archeology projects in Durango, Chihuahua and Michoacán México. He has been responsible for the Museum in Paquimé, Chihuahua, archeological zones like the Ferrería in Durango, Tzintzuntzan and Tingambato in Michoacán. His principal research lines are the relations between the US Southwest, and Mesoamerica, archeometallurgy and west Mexico archeology. Also the uses of drones, GIS, LiDAR and digital applications for archeology and patrimony. He resides in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico.

Camilla Speller is an Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her PhD dissertation, completed at Simon Fraser University, applied ancient DNA techniques to study the use of wild and domestic turkeys in the Southwest United States. In 2010, she was awarded a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship to continue her research on North American turkey domestication at the University of Calgary and in 2012, joined the BioArCh Centre at the University of York, UK as a Marie Curie postdoctoral research fellow (EU-IIF) where she applied ZooMS and ancient DNA analysis to questions of historic whale exploitation. She became a Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of York in 2014 and led the ancient genetics group at BioArCh until 2018. Her major research focus is ‘Molecular Environmental Archaeology’ – the application of biomolecular techniques to a broad range of environmental issues and human-environment interactions in the past and in the present. Her research explores how humans have shaped their physical world, from broad-scale impacts on ancient ecosystems to the micro-environment of the human body. Dr Speller’s research methods include ancient genomic analysis (ancient DNA), ancient proteomics, and collagen peptide mass fingerprinting (ZooMS). This work is conducted in the Ancient DNA and Proteins (ADαPT) Facility at UBC, a suite state-of-the-art laboratories for the analysis of ancient biomolecules.

English bio