Joyce Marcus

Joyce Marcus has carried out fieldwork in Nevada (Lovelock Cave), California (the La Brea Tar Pit), Mexico (San José Mogote), Guatemala (El Mirador, Tres Islas, Naranjo, Tintal, Chunhuitz), and Peru (Cerro Azul). Marcus entered the field of Archaeology after Heinrich Berlin had shown that certain hieroglyphs (which he called ‘emblem glyphs’) referred to the "divine lords" of Maya cities. By plotting the distribution of emblem glyphs, Marcus showed that some Maya states had a four-tiered hierarchy in which secondary centers mentioned the king at the capital, tertiary centers mentioned lords at secondary centers and so on. A byproduct of this work was her identification of the previously unknown emblem glyphs of Calakmul and Motul de San José. This discovery led to excavations by William Folan that showed Calakmul was one of the biggest Maya capitals, at the center of a hexagonal lattice of secondary centers. Marcus then began to document the rise of Maya states, dating the moment when each capital acquired its emblem glyph. This led to her fleshing out a “Dynamic Model” which shows the way Maya regions went through cycles of political centralization and breakdown.  Marcus then decided to see if she could document the rise and fall of the Zapotec state by analyzing the hieroglyphs of that undeciphered script. She eventually showed a Zapotec pattern of centralization and breakdown similar to the Maya. She went on to co-direct the University of Michigan project at San José Mogote, Oaxaca, which produced Mexico’s oldest hieroglyphic monument, as well as key data on the social and political evolution of the Zapotec.  Her 2020 book, Zapotec Monuments and Political History, reports on advances in the study of the Zapotec writing system in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Marcus went on to investigate the relationship between archaeological data and Spanish eyewitness accounts by excavating the site of Cerro Azul, Peru. In 2008 she published its architecture and pottery; in 2009 she published data on its brewery.  Her 2016 edited volume ----Coastal Ecosystems and Economic Strategies at Cerro Azul, Peru: The Study of a Late Intermediate Kingdom --- documents the drying of fish for export to agricultural communities, evidence for the raising of guinea pigs, and identification of all the fish bones recovered at the site.  Her latest book, The Burials of Cerro Azul, Peru (2023), illustrates the items buried with men (e.g., fishing nets, slings) and those associated with women (workbaskets, looms, spindles and spindle whorls, needles, yarn balls). 

Research Areas(s)

• origins of the village
• the origins of writing
• comparative chiefdoms and states
• the emergence of social and political inequality
• the political economy of states and empires

Affiliation(s)

• Anthropology

Award(s)

• Elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1997)
• Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1997)
• Elected to the American Philosophical Society (2008)
• Cotsen Book Prize for Excavations at Cerro Azul, Peru: The Architecture and Pottery (2008)
• Shanghai Award for contributions to archaeology (2013)
• Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award, University of Michigan (2007)
• Mentor Recognition Award, University of California at San Diego