Melanie Pugliese

Melanie’s research is focused on foodways, ethnoecology and agriculture of ancient Maya people. She uses microbotanical analysis to reconstruct the paleoenvironment and elucidate human-environment interactions. Using microbotanical remains, phytoliths and starch grains, her past research was centered on plant use in the southern Maya Lowlands at the sites of Budsilha and Rio Amarillo.

For her current PhD research she hopes to determine how past Maya communities were utilizing plant resources and how changes in climate and the environment may have influenced these practices in the area. She aims to analyze botanical remains from Maya archaeological contexts in the Usumacinta River region to identify the species present, and draw conclusions about plant propagation and use by ancient Maya people.