William Saturno - In Search of the Ancient Maya

Presented by Natural History Museum of Utah at Natural History Museum of Utah

02/12/2019

-- Reservations have reached capacity for the NHMU talk. Seats remain available for Saturno's talk at the Viridian Center in West Jordan, Utah  on February 13th at 7:00pm (more information available here) --

This is a free lecture, but reservations are required.
Join us on opening night of the 2019 Lecture Series with archaeologist William Saturno discussing his work with the Ancient Maya.

Saturno received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University. A specialist in Mesoamerican civilization and archaeological remote sensing, he has conducted fieldwork in the American Southwest, Bolivia, Cambodia, Peru, Mexico, Belize, Honduras and, most recently, Guatemala.

In March 2001, while exploring in northeastern Guatemala for Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, he discovered the remote archaeological site of San Bartolo and the oldest intact murals ever found in the Maya world. Regarding this discovery he says “there the paintings remained, hidden in the Guatemalan jungle, for more than 2,000 years before those divine faces again met human eyes. I was the fortunate one to uncover the mural."

He directs the San Bartolo Regional Archaeology Project, a multinational interdisciplinary research effort dedicated to the excavation and conservation of these spectacular murals and to understanding San Bartolo’s role in this largely unexplored region of the Maya area during the period when Maya civilization itself was just forming. Currently the focus of the regional project has extended to the enormous neighboring center of Xultún, the dynastic seat in the region throughout the Maya Classic period.