Christopher Morehart is an environmental anthropologist, an ethnobotanist/paleoethnobotanist, and an archaeologist. One of the best things about anthropology and archaeology is the ability and training to exhibit this kind of flexible pragmatism. Indeed, this characteristic is what drew him to anthropology and is what keeps him there. These interests have led Morehart to tackle a number of social questions at different times and places. Regionally, the vast majority of his work as an anthropological archaeologist occurs in the region scholars call (somewhat arbitrarily) Mesoamerica. Sub-regionally, he has conducted research in the Maya Lowlands of Belize, Yucatan, and Guatemala, and has been working intensively in the Basin of Mexico over the past several years. Conceptually, much of his research centers on questions of inequality and ideology. Morehart has studied the impact of state power on agrarian landscapes, the connection between politics and environmental sustainability, the integration of ritual with politics, community formation in the wake of imperial collapse, the effect of economic circumstances on gender relations, the role of archaeological narratives in contemporary identity politics, and many other important anthropological issues.
He continues to work as a paleoethnobotanist on archaeological projects in Yucatan, Mexico; Belize, Guatemala; and the southeast United States. Creating a Mesoamerican ethnobotanical database (based on published literature) is a project Morehart has been working on since 2000. However, his primary research exists in central Mexico, namely the Northern Basin of Mexico. He was the director of the Proyecto Chinampero Xaltocan, an archaeological project that reconstructed the raised field agricultural landscape surrounding the pre-Aztec city state of Xaltocan. This project gave Morehart the opportunity to invest in an agricultural landscape the same amount of time and energy archaeologists typically give to residential sites. In so doing, he realized the importance of these spaces for addressing central problems in the archaeology of political economy as well as key limitations in many of our models that explain the relationship between farmers and politics. Moreover, this work opened his eyes to agricultural landscapes as active, lived spaces—spaces where past people spent so much of their daily lives (but spaces that seem to be relegated archaeologically to a handful of surface collections, trenches or test pits, if that). Using satellite imagery and aerial photos (managed in a GIS) with this intensive, on the ground fieldwork, allowed him to document one of the largest pre-Aztec chinampa systems.
As an environmental anthropologist, however, this work is only one aspect of longer term research on the historical ecology of the northern Basin of Mexico—a project with questions whose answers are as much about the present as they are about the past. Fundamentally, this project stresses the political ecological dimension of historical ecology and seeks to understand the impact of political change on how people interacted with the environment. Archaeologically, the investigators are working at sites that date from the Formative period to the Colonial and more recent historic periods in the northern Basin of Mexico. The kinds of sites they are studying include villages and residences, ritual shrines, specialized lake-shore sites (perhaps trading ports?), and canal and terrace systems. One of this project's great challenges is integrating data that exist at very different spatial and temporal scales, such as intensive excavation data, survey data, aerial photos and satellite images, historic texts and maps, ethnographic data and oral histories, and paleoecological records. But this challenge makes this project more exciting and significant. They will produce a historical ecology and biography of landscape that is meaningful both for scientists and historians and for living residents.
Historical and Political Ecology. Landscapes. Ethnobotany. Food. Agriculture and water management. Archaeology of ritual. GIS. Remote sensing. Archaeology of gender. Public archaeology. Economic anthropology. Mexican history.
Academia.edu: https://asu.academia.edu/ChristopherMorehart
New Book: "Surplus: The Politics of Production and the Strategies of Everyday Life," edited by Christopher Morehart and Kristin De Lucia
Older Book: "Food, Fire, and Fragrance: A Paleoethnobotanical Perspective on Classic Maya Cave Rituals"
Random Links and News:
Looking to the Future to Examine the Past
ASU Anthropologist Examines Community Identity in Award Winning Article
Surplus Matters: An Archaeologist's View
Archaeology Magazine News Brief
Interviews et al.
ASU Professor Researches History of Where Politics, Environment Intersect
Christopher Morehart. 2015 Archaeologies of the Past and in the Present: Materialities of Human History.. American Anthropologist (2015).
Christopher Morehart and Shanti-Morell-Hart. Beyond the Ecofact: Toward a Social Paleoethnobotany in Mesoamerica. . In Press. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (2015).
Morehart, Christopher. Archaeologies of the Past and in the Present: Materialities of Human History. American Anthropologist (2015).
Edited book: Christopher Morehart and Kristin De Lucia. Surplus: The Politics of Production and the Strategies of Everyday Life. University of Colorado Press (2015).
Book chapter: De Lucia, Kristin, and Christopher Morehart. Surplus and Social Change: The Production of Household and Field in Pre-Aztec Central Mexico. Surplus: The Politics of Production and the Strategies of Everyday Life.. The University of Colorado Press, Boulder (2015).
Christopher Morehart. The Potentiality and the Consequences of Surplus: Agricultural Production and Institutional Transformation in the Northern Basin of Mexico. Economic Anthropology (2014).
Christopher Morehart and Charles Frederick. The Chronology and Collapse of Pre-Aztec (chinampa) agriculture in the Northern Basin of Mexico..Antiquity (2014).
Christopher Morehart and Shanti-Morell-Hart. Beyond the Ecofact: Toward a Social Paleoethnobotany in Mesoamerica. . In Press. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (2014).
Morehart, Christopher, and Shanti Morell-Hart. Beyond the Ecofact: Toward a Social Paleoethnobotany in Mesoamerica. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
Book chapter: Morehart, Christopher, and Kristin De Lucia. Surplus: The Politics of Production and the Strategies of Everyday Life, an Introduction.. Surplus: The Politics of Production and the Strategies of Everyday Life.. The University of Colorado Press, Boulder
Subsistence and Economic Diversity Resilience and Transformation in the Northern Basin of Mexico. NSF-SBE-SES (9/1/2015 - 8/31/2019).
Summer 2022 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 362 | People and Plants |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |
Spring 2022 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 337 | Pyramids and Hieroglyphs |
ASB 484 | Internship |
ASB 492 | Honors Directed Study |
ASB 493 | Honors Thesis |
ASB 499 | Individualized Instruction |
ASB 584 | Internship |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 592 | Research |
ASB 790 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |
Fall 2021 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 362 | People and Plants |
ASB 484 | Internship |
ASB 492 | Honors Directed Study |
ASB 493 | Honors Thesis |
ASB 499 | Individualized Instruction |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 592 | Research |
ASB 790 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |
Summer 2021 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 362 | People and Plants |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |
Spring 2021 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 223 | Aztecs, Incas and Mayas |
ASB 484 | Internship |
ASB 492 | Honors Directed Study |
ASB 493 | Honors Thesis |
ASB 499 | Individualized Instruction |
ASB 584 | Internship |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 592 | Research |
ASB 790 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |
Fall 2020 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 362 | People and Plants |
ASB 484 | Internship |
ASB 492 | Honors Directed Study |
ASB 493 | Honors Thesis |
ASB 499 | Individualized Instruction |
ASB 500 | Research Methods |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 592 | Research |
ASB 790 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |
Summer 2020 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 362 | People and Plants |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |
Spring 2020 | |
---|---|
Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 484 | Internship |
ASB 492 | Honors Directed Study |
ASB 493 | Honors Thesis |
ASB 499 | Individualized Instruction |
ASB 584 | Internship |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 592 | Research |
ASB 790 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |
Fall 2019 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 484 | Internship |
ASB 492 | Honors Directed Study |
ASB 493 | Honors Thesis |
ASB 499 | Individualized Instruction |
ASB 580 | Practicum |
ASB 584 | Internship |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 592 | Research |
ASB 790 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |
Summer 2019 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 362 | People and Plants |
Spring 2019 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 337 | Pyramids and Hieroglyphs |
ASB 362 | People and Plants |
ASB 484 | Internship |
ASB 492 | Honors Directed Study |
ASB 493 | Honors Thesis |
ASB 499 | Individualized Instruction |
ESS 502 | Politicl Ecology: Thry & Rsrc |
ASB 580 | Practicum |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 592 | Research |
ASB 790 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |
Fall 2018 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 223 | Aztecs, Incas and Mayas |
ASB 484 | Internship |
ASB 492 | Honors Directed Study |
ASB 493 | Honors Thesis |
ASB 499 | Individualized Instruction |
ASB 580 | Practicum |
ASB 584 | Internship |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 592 | Research |
ASB 790 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |
Summer 2018 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 222 | Buried Cities and Lost Tribes |
ASB 362 | People and Plants |
Spring 2018 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
ASB 362 | People and Plants |
ASB 484 | Internship |
ASB 492 | Honors Directed Study |
ASB 493 | Honors Thesis |
ASB 499 | Individualized Instruction |
ASB 580 | Practicum |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 592 | Research |
ASB 790 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |
Fall 2017 | |
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Course Number | Course Title |
LIA 194 | Special Topics |
ASB 223 | Aztecs, Incas and Mayas |
ASB 484 | Internship |
ASB 492 | Honors Directed Study |
ASB 493 | Honors Thesis |
ASB 499 | Individualized Instruction |
ASB 580 | Practicum |
ASB 584 | Internship |
ASB 590 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 592 | Research |
ASB 790 | Reading and Conference |
ASB 792 | Research |
ASB 799 | Dissertation |