Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Sessions in Honor of Dr. Fred Valdez Jr. and His Contributions to Archaeology, Part 1" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Professor Fred Valdez Jr. has had a long, important career in terms of his own contributions to Maya archaeology and through his direction of projects and institutions. As director of The Center for Archaeological and Tropical Studies (CATS) at The University of Texas at Austin and the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP) he has mentored scores of students at all levels. He has also advised a remarkable number of doctorates and master’s degrees as a professor at UT Austin over the past several decades. Fred has also taken on the heavy mantle of directing the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) at The University of Texas at Austin. This session brings together papers on the considerable contributions of Fred Valdez, Jr. to Maya Archaeology and to Archaeology in general. This session brings together papers focused on the following topics: novel research presentations on Maya archaeology that Fred has supported and contributed to over many decades, discussions on his pedagogy and mentorship, and complementary special topics on bioarchaeology, geoarchaeology, geophysics, and paleoecology that have been supported by Fred through his leadership at CATS, PfBAP and TARL.