PhD in Archaeology 2015
Areas of Interest
Archaeology of Latin America; Material Culture; Education and State Power; Murals and Codex books; Literacy; Politics and History of Ecological Management; Archaeology of Science and Technology; Monuments and Memory; Experimental Archaeology; Epigraphy and Iconography; Digital Humanities; Comparative Anthropology of the Americas.
Excavations and Fieldwork
Franco D. Rossi is an archaeologist and epigrapher specializing in the pre-Columbian Americas, with a focus on politics of literacy, architecture and art of the Ancient Maya. His most recent project draws from fieldwork he conducted at the site of Xultun in Northeastern Guatemala as a part of the San Bartolo/Xultun Regional Archaeological Project—examining the archaeology of a complex called Los Sabios and its rare murals. He investigates this unique body of evidence as a window into broader questions of how writing, expertise, and science education were managed in ancient Mesoamerican statecraft.
Representative Publications
Rossi, F.D., W.A. Saturno and H. Hurst. 2015. Maya Codex Book Production and the Politics of Expertise: An Archaeology of a Classic Period Household at Xultun, Guatemala. American Anthropologist, 117(1).
Rossi, F.D. 2015. The Brothers Taaj: Civil-religious Orders and the Politics of Expertise in Late Maya Statecraft. Ph.D. Dissertation. Department of Archaeology, Boston University.