Wendy Ashmore received her Ph.D. in 1981 from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation presented the results of the Site-Periphery Program of the Quiriguá Project that took place between 1975 and 1979. Specifically, it presents the results of the Quiriguá Floodplain Periphery Program, which, among other aspects, emphasizes systematic sampling, highlights the limitation of models used at the time in settlement pattern studies in the Maya region, and uses the research to make suggestions for future investigations (see Ashmore 1981: 5). Currently, Ashmore is a faculty member of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside.
Ashmore’s region of specialty is the Maya Area of Mesoamerica, where she has carried out extensive research at the sites of (Guatemala), Copán and Gualjoquito (Honduras), and Xunantunich (Belize). Her research focuses on the social use and understanding of space, and the structure and meaning of ancient Maya settlements, addressed through the study of architecture and settlement patterns. In addition to these general interests in ancient landscapes, Ashmore also focuses on social memory (Quiriguá) and the social and symbolic aspects of spatial organization, which she has extensively studied through household archaeology, and the analysis of civic planning in cities and towns (see Ashmore and Sabloff 2002). More recently, she has added gender and landscape to her studies, or more precisely “how gender affects and is affected by architecture and other kinds of spatial order” (1).
At a conference on the structure and meaning in human settlements at the University of Pennsylvania in 2000, Ashmore presented her research on Maya town planning and its relationship to cosmology, political strategies, and landscape interpretations. Her results demonstrated that ancient Maya site planning involved “complex material enactment of a well-structured and highly meaningful spatial order” (2). Maya archaeology is therefore indebted to Ashmore for broadening this avenue of research. Through her ongoing efforts she has advanced the methodological and theoretical frameworks for studying ancient Maya city layouts within the broader complexities of their sociopolitical context. Ashmore is a leader in studies of landscape archaeology in the Maya region. Her work has been influential for understanding the complex nature of site layouts including the social, political, and ideological meaning behind their organization.
Ashmore has published extensively. In 1981 she edited the volume Lowland Maya Settlement Patterns, a volume that resulted from an Advanced Seminar at the School of American Research. Ashmore’s article, “Some Issues of Method and Theory in Lowland Maya Settlement Archaeology,” and the volume as a whole, continue to be widely cited by contemporary scholars studying settlement pattern in the Maya region. She has collaborated with other scholars in the publication of several books, including Archaeology: Discovering Our Past, a textbook addressing the techniques and theoretical frameworks of contemporary archaeology (with Robert J. Sharer). In 2007 she completed the monograph Settlement Archaeology at Quiriguá, Guatemala. Ashmore along with A. Bernard Knapp also edited the volume Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives (1999) that focused on how people perceive and experience space and place, and the difficulties in defining “landscape.” The book also advocates a multiplicity of approaches to the study of landscape. Ashmore’s many journal publications and contributions to edited volumes are clear indicators of the potential and importance of such studies for the advancement of our knowledge about the ancient Maya (1). Finally, the nature of Ashmore’s work is well balanced between theory, methodology, and practice, and as such is exemplary.(1) http://anthropology.ucr.edu/people/ashmore/index.html
(2) http://www.design.upenn.edu/arch/news/Human_Settlements/mayan.html#bio