The research interests of Patricia A. McAnany include ritual practice (particularly ancestor veneration), cacao production and use, wetland reclamation, and lithic technology. She has conducted fieldwork in the Maya lowlands, the American Southwest, Polynesia, and Alaska. With financial support from the National Science Foundation, the Ahau Foundation, and Boston University Division of International Programs, she directed field research at K’axob (1990-1998) and since 1997 has been the Principal Investigator of the Xibun Archaeological Research Project. Her research in Belize often includes an undergraduate field school, a graduate-training component, and inter-disciplinary specialists.

Honors and fellowships received by Patricia A. McAnany include an NEH Fellowship (2005), Bunting Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, 1999-2000; Dumbarton Oaks Summer Fellowship, 1994; Dumbarton Oaks Resident Fellowship, 1991-92; and a Charles P. Taft Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cincinnati, 1986. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology and is Director of Undergraduate Studies within the Department of Archaeology.

Representative Publications
2004 (editor)
K'axob: Ritual, Work, and Family in an Ancient Maya Village. Monumenta Archaeologica 22, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles (digital & hard copy publication).

2003 with Stephen D. Houston
Bodies and Blood: Critiquing Social Construction in Maya Archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 22:26-41.

2002 (editor)
Sacred Landscape and Settlement in the Sibun River Valley: XARP 1999 Survey and Excavation. SUNY Institute of Mesoamerican Studies Occasional Paper 8. Albany, NY.

2001 with Sandra López Varela and Kimberly Berry
Ceramic Technology at Late Classic K’axob, Belize. Journal of Field Archaeology 28(1&2):177-191.

1995 Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society. University of Texas Press, Austin.

1989 and Barry L. Isaac, editors
Prehistoric Maya Economies of Belize. JAI Press, Greenwich.