Brandeis University
Department of Anthropology
415 South Street
Waltham, MA 02454
(781) 736-2217
cgolden@brandeis.edu
Profile
Professor Charles W Golden is committed to the notion of archaeology as a broadly anthropological discipline that should draw insights from throughout the social sciences, humanities and the physical sciences.
From 2003 to 2010, he directed the Sierra del Lacandòn Regional Archaeology Project with colleagues from the United States and Guatemala. Their bi-national effort brought together archaeologists, biological anthropologists, faunal experts, soils researchers, and other scholars to model the development of ancient Maya Kingdoms from the perspective of the borderlands between dynastic capitals. Their regional focus was on the hinterland settlements that dot the landscape between Piedras Negras, Guatemala and Yaxchilan, Mexico, two dynastic centers that competed for control of the region from about AD 350 to 810. This project was the first systematic regional archaeological survey in the middle Usumacinta River Basin.
In 2010, he and Andrew Scherer (Brown University) began the Proyecto Arqueologico Busily-Chicolja, which expands upon that previous research in Guatemala through a regional study of the landscape surrounding the archeological site of La Mar, in Chiapas, Mexico.
Selected Publications:
A. Scherer, C. Golden, S. Houston, M. Matsumoto (2022). Chronology and the evidence for war in the ancient Maya Kingdom of Piedras Negras. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 66:101408.
W. Schroder, T. Murtha, C. Golden, R. Griffin (2021). UAV LiDAR Survey for Archaeological Documentation in Chiapas, Mexico. Remote Sensing 13(23):3731.
C. Golden, A. Scherer, W. Schroder, T. Murtha (2021). Airborne Lidar Survey, Density-Based Clustering, and Ancient Maya Settlement in the Upper Usumacinta River Region of Mexico and Guatemala. Remote Sensing 13(20):4109.
C. Golden, A, Scherer, W. Schroder, A. Roche Recinos (2020). Decentralizing the Economies of the Maya West. In book: The Business of Ancient Maya Economies (pp.407-417).
A. Scherer, C. Golden, S. Houston (2018). True People, Foreigners, and the Framing of Maya Morality. In book: Bioarchaeology of Pre-Colombian Mesoamerica (pp.159-191).