James Fitzsimmons

James L. Fitzsimmons received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2002. He has taught at both the University of New Hampshire and the University of South Dakota and has held writing fellowships at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, D.C., and the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. As a Mesoamerican archaeologist, his research interests include the anthropology of death, the rise of complex societies in Mesoamerica, and the origins of writing.

Dr. Fitzsimmons is currently directing an archaeological project at the Classic Maya (250-850 AD) site of Zapote Bobal, Guatemala. Known as Hix Witz, or ‘Jaguar Hill’ in ancient Maya times, this site features prominently in the history of famous Maya cities like Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan as both an adversary and an ally. The first excavations here began in 2004 and will continue over the next five years, and have already uncovered a rich, undiscovered history portrayed in numerous hieroglyphic texts as well as the archaeological record.

In addition to his work at Zapote Bobal, Dr. Fitzsimmons is actively engaged in fine-tuning his book manuscript, recently accepted for publication by the University of Texas Press. Entitled Death and the Classic Maya Kings, the book is an outgrowth of his dissertation research on royal funerary practices in the Maya area. In it he reconstructs the ceremonies, attitudes, and beliefs of the Maya nobility in their interactions with the dead, combining the results of archaeological excavations with ideas presented in ancient hieroglyphic texts and examples gleaned from Maya ethnography and ethnohistory.

Dr. Fitzsimmons has offered courses on introductory archaeology, sociocultural anthropology, physical anthropology, death and the body, ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, Precolumbian art, and indigenous writing systems of the Americas. In the classroom, he enjoys bringing archaeology and the other subdisciplines of anthropology together; he likewise draws upon general comparative material from the humanities and social sciences. He believes that a multidisciplinary approach to the ancient past not only allows students to engage archaeology from familiar angles, but also permits a richer interpretation of world prehistory and the people in it.