Guy Hepp

My primary research emphasis is the early complex societies of Mesoamerica. Since 2009, I have directed the La Consentida Archaeological Project (LCAP), which focuses on studying the Early Formative period (2000–1000 BCE) village site of La Consentida in coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. La Consentida has produced evidence of early pottery, mounded earthen architecture, and a diet incorporating significant quantities of maize and wild fauna. The National Science Foundation and the Fulbright Program have generously funded this work. The project's initial results appeared in my doctoral dissertation, which was awarded the 2016 Society for American Archaeology Dissertation Award. The University Press of Colorado published a revised version of this study as a book in 2019.

In related work, I study ancient Mesoamerican ceramic figurines, musical instruments, masks, evidence of ritual specialization, and mortuary practices. Broadly, I am interested in the native peoples of the Americas and in the changes in settlement, subsistence, social organization, and cosmology that were integral to establishing early villages.

I love teaching anthropology courses, both in my specific area of research and more broadly. In particular, I enjoy teaching about the cosmology and social practices of non-Western societies and using current examples to show how those topics are relevant to our daily lives. I also enjoy graduate seminars in which the students and I dive deeply into different theoretical approaches to understanding the past. Teaching about Mesoamerican society, the beliefs and practices of the world's other early complex civilizations, theoretical concepts such as the archaeology of the senses, experimental archaeology, and the use of gaming in education all inspire me as a teacher.