Current Team Members
Previous Team Members & Grad Students
Previous Field School Students
Dr. Helen R. Haines - Project Director
http://www.trentu.ca/anthropology/HelenHaines.php info@kakabish.org Dr. Haines fell in love with Ka'kabish in 1995 when she participated in a survey of the site as part of work conducted by the Maya Research Program. After completing three-years of Post-Doctoral Research at The Field Museum in Chicago, she returned to Belize in 2004. After visiting the area in 2006 to assess the logistics of working at the site she founded the Ka'kabish Archaeological Research Project (KARP) in 2007. The project has grown exponentially over the years and currently supports an undergraduate field school along with both MA and doctoral research, while data generated from the project contributes to numerous subsidiary research projects. Dr. Haines is currently an Associate Professor at Trent University, Canada, where she teaches both undergraduate and graduate students. She also holds an Honorary Senior Research Association potion at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, where she also obtained her Ph.D. in 2000, and is a Research Associate at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Her dissertation focused on the socio-political and economic importance of obsidian in ancient Maya society. |
Dr. Kerry L. Sagebiel - Co-Director, Laboratory Director & Ceramicist
Dr. Sagebiel holds many positions at KARP. Along with being the Co-Director, having joined the team in 2011, she also is the ceramic analyst and laboratory director. Her research at Ka’Kabish is concerned with the circumstances of the founding, growth of social complexity and abandonment(s) of Ka’Kabish as related to its place in the social, economic and political landscapes and entanglements of North-central Belize. This includes work on boundary maintenance and social and political emulation, accommodation and resistance as reflected in ceramics. Prior to her joining KARP, Dr. Sagebiel conducted research on Maya ceramics at the sites of La Milpa, Blue Creek; Gran Cacao, Belize and San Bartolo, Guatemala. She obtained her Ph.D. from the from the University of Arizona in 2005. Her dissertation analysed the ceramics from La Milpa, Belize, to identify potential temporal changes in the political allegiances of the site. Previously, she earned her M.A., and B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. |
Dr. Alec McLellan - Research Associate
Alec is an on-going researcher with KARP having served as the Field Director for the Ka'kabish Project, as well as co-Director of his own excavations at Coco Chan in collaboration with Dr. Cara Tremain (another former KARP MA Student). Alec obtained his Ph.D. in December 2019, from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth Graham (Director, Lamanai Archaeology Project). Previously, he earned his Master's degree at Trent University in 2012 under the direction of Drs. Paul Healy and Helen R. Haines. Both his M.A. Thesis and Doctoral Dissertation focused on settlement issues in the Ka'kabish and Lamanai areas and are accessible on our Thesis and Dissertation publication page. He obtained his B.A. from Trent University Durham where he studied archaeology with Dr. Haines (after she poached him from the History Department). |
Dr. Jennifer Newton - Bio-Archaeologist
Dr. Newton joined KARP in 2020 as our bio-archaeologist helping supervise excavations in the field during. She is an LT-appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Trent University and helped create KARL (Ka'kabish Archaeological Research Lab at Trent University). Jen obtained her PhD from James Cook University in Queensland, Australia specializing in bio-archaeology. For her thesis she studied the human skeletal remains from numerous archaeological sites to examine health, diet and migration during the transition to the pre-Angkorian civilization of Southeast Asia. She also holds an MSc from Bournemouth University, UK, in Forensic & Biological Anthropology, in addition to an Honours BA from York University, Toronto in Kinesiology & Health Sciences and Anthropology. |
Mr. Norbert Stanchly - Zooarchaeologist
Mr. Stanchly is an expert archaeologist and zooarchaeologist. He has worked as an archaeologist at numerous sites in Belize including Minanha, Xibun, Lamanai, and Pacbitun. He also has conducted zoological analysis for many additional projects, either as a formal staff member or in a consulting role, including the Maya Research Program, Belize Valley Archaeology Project, Social Archaeology Research Program, Xibun Archaeological Research Project, Belize Post-Classic Project, and the Trent U Preclassic Maya Project. Mr. Stanchly also owns and operates AS&G Archaeological Consulting, an Ontario-focused CRM company, and is equally conversant about Ontario archaeological cultural and faunal materials. Norbert and Helen met in a second-year archaeology class when they were both undergraduates at the University of Toronto. |
Dr. Aaron Shugar - Archaeometallurgist
Dr. Shugar holds the Bader Chair in Art Conservation at Queen's University. Previous, Aaron held the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Art Conservation Department at Buffalo State University. Although he is often called upon to work on a variety of objects (including a restoration project on the original Enterprise model from the 1960) his specialty is ancient metals, and he has worked on artefacts from around the world, including from the nearby site of Lamanai. Dr. Shugar is currently working on conserving and analysing, using XRF, the copper artefacts recovered from the chultuns at Ka'kabish. He is also a graduate of the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, where he and Helen met as they were in the same co-hort. |
James Bacon - 2022-2024
KARP Research Associated James completed his MA at Trent University in October 2024. He has been working in Belize since 2016, initially volunteering at Blue Creek before working at El Pilar both in the field and remotely as a team member. He also has worked in England, Spain, and Guatemala. James’s work is focused on four aspects of Archaeology/Anthropology: Field excavation, Survey, Global Information Systems (GIS), and Digital Reconstructions. |
Devon Howell - Research Associate
Devon is a Biological Anthropologist and Health Scientists interested in the relationship between socio-cultural determinants of health, dental development, and the impact of physical disabilities on overall quality of life. His MSc from Trent University focused on studying the Use and Utilisation of Loose and Commingled Human Remains (weblink). He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Western Ontario where his research examines qualitative approaches to health research, critical health theory, and the roll of social, cultural, and economic systems in the management of life-long chronic health conditions. Although Devon's current research focuses on modern populations he is still an active member of KARP/KARL. He is helping us further our understanding of how ancient skeletal osteological and paleopathological evidence may have translated into lived experiences. |
Dr. Christophe Helmke - Epigrapher
https://ccrs.ku.dk/staff/?pure=en/persons/307762 Dr. Helmke is a faculty member with the Institute of Cross-cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His primary research interests are Maya archaeology and epigraphy and, along with collaborating on numerous projects in Belize, he has also partaken in excavations in France and Japan. Christophe has a wide range of other cultural interests including ancient Maya cave utilization, household archaeology, Mesoamerican writing systems and rock art, as well as Amerindian mythologies. At present he is the director of an epigraphic and iconographic documentation project operating in the central Maya lowlands and central Mexican highlands. He has worked on glyphs from a painted tomb at Ka'kabish and hopes for future epigraphic discoveries at the site. |
Claude Belanger
Consulting Archaeologist and Architect Mr. Belanger is a professional architect and an expert archaeologist with a long history of working in Belize. He also is a member of the Lamanai Archaeology Project, having worked with David Pendergast, at Lamanai as part of the original Royal Ontario Museum excavations in the 1980s. He continues to work at Lamanai with Dr. Elizabeth Graham, and assists us at Ka'kabish with our more puzzling architectural problems. |
