Don Rice

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Past Director/Emeritus Professor of Anthropology

Email: drice@siu.edu


Research Interests

Dr. Don Rice’s research has focused primarily on demographic history, human use of and impact upon tropical environments, modeling of future land use in the tropics, and culture change and ethnogenesis.  He has directed grant-funded, multi-disciplinary research in Guatemala and Peru, participated in studies in Belize and Mexico, and supervised graduate student dissertation work in these countries and in the Dominican Republic.  His current research project is an archaeological investigation, co-directed with Prudence M. Rice, of the development of 10th-17th century AD Maya political geography in the Department of Petén, Guatemala, and of the Spanish conquest of Maya groups in this region.


Courses

  • Anth 205: Latin American Civilization
  • Anth 304: Origins of Civilization
  • Anth 410K: Ecological Anthropology
  • Anth 430B: Archaeology of Meso-America
  • Anth 511: Seminar in Meso-American Archaeology
  • Anth 516: Seminar in Archaeology of Complex Societies
  • Anth 576: Seminar in Anthropological Research Design

Selected Publications

2006  Maya urbanism:  concepts, processes, and realities.  In Urbanism in the Preindustrial World: Cross-Cultural Approaches, edited by G. Storey, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

2005   (Rice, D. S., and P. M. Rice)  Seventeenth-century Maya political geography and resistance in central Petén, Guatemala.  In The Postclassic-to-Spanish-Era Transition in Mesoamerica: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by R. Alexander and S. Kepecs.  University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

2005  (Rice, P. M., and D. S. Rice)  The final frontier of the Maya:  Central Petén, Guatemala, A.D. 1450-1700.  In Untaming the Frontier in Anthropology, Archaeology, and History. edited by R. J. Parker and L. Rodseth.  University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 

2004   (Rice, P. M., and D. S. Rice)  Late Classic to Postclassic transformations in the Petén lakes region, Guatemala.  In The Terminal Classic Period in the Maya Lowlands:  Collapse, Transitions, and Transformations, edited by A. A. Demarest, P. M. Rice, and D. S. Rice.  University of Colorado Press, Boulder.

2001   Yaxhá (Petén, Guatemala).  In Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia, edited by S. T. Evans and D. L. Webster, pp. 841-842.  Garland, New York. 

1999   Ambiente y agricultura:  tierras bajas mayas.  In Epoca precolombina, edited by M. Popenoe de Hatch, pp. 445-458. Historia general de Guatemala, Vol. 2, J. Lujan Muñoz (gen. ed.), Asociación de Amigos del Pueblo; Fundación para la Cultura y el Desarrollo Guatemala.  

1999  (Rice, P. M. and D. S. Rice)  Período Postclásico:  tierras bajas mayas.  In Epoca precolombina, edited by M. Popenoe de Hatch, pp. 365-380.  Historia general de Guatemala, Vol. 2, J. Lujan Muñoz (gen. ed.), Asociación de Amigos del Pueblo; Fundación para la Cultura y el Desarrollo Guatemala.  
         
1998   (Rice, D. S.; P. M. Rice, and T. Pugh)  Settlement continuity and change in the central Petén lakes region:  the case of Zacpetén.  In Anatomía de una civilización.  Aproximaciones interdisciplinarias a la cultura maya, edited by A. Ciudad Ruíz, Y. Fernández Marquínez, J. M. García Campillo, M. Josefa Iglesias Ponce de León, A. Lacadena García-Gallo, and L. T. Sanz Castro, pp. 208-252.  Publicación número 4, Sociedad Española de Estudios Mayas, Madrid.