Michael Maddox

Michael is a household archaeologist and doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology, who works at the Late Preclassic to Late/Terminal Classic (400 BCE to 900 CE) ancient Maya city of La Milpa. His research focuses upon topics of urbanism, including the social and economic conditions of household growth, the formation of marketplaces, and demographic change. For his MA degree, Michael surveyed a 25-hectare section of the city, examining the distribution of nuclear and extended family households at the site. His dissertation research utilizes a comparative approach to the study household production, craft specialization and multicrafting, using targeted excavations, spatial analysis, and compositional techniques. Since 2013, Michael has been a research associate with the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project and he continues to support the undergraduate field school there. 

Selected Publications:

Maddox, Michael F.
2024 Compositional Analysis of the Major Stelae at La Milpa using Portable X-Ray Fluorescence. In Programme for Belize Archaeological Project: Summary Report of the 2023 Investigations, edited by Fred Valdez, Jr. and Marisol Cortes‐Rincon. Report submitted to the Institute of Archaeology, National Institute of Culture and History, Belmopan, Belize. 

2024 Comparative Household Research at La Milpa North Chico: Report for the 2023 Field Season. In Programme for Belize Archaeological Project: Summary Report of the 2023 Investigations, edited by Fred Valdez, Jr. and Marisol Cortes‐Rincon. Report submitted to the Institute of Archaeology, National Institute of Culture and History, Belmopan, Belize.

2023 Examining Late Preclassic Economic Complexity Using PXRF: Revisiting the Colha Sphere of Exchange. Paper presented at the 11th Annual South-Central Conference on Mesoamerica, San Antonio.