Diane Zaino Chase

Last updated

Diane Zaino Chase (born 1953) is an American anthropologist and archaeologist who specializes in the study of the Ancient Maya. She currently serves as senior vice president for academic affairs and provost of the University of Houston and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs for the University of Houston System. [1]

Contents

Career

Chase attended the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a BA in anthropology in 1975. She completed her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in 1982 with a dissertation on "Spatial and Temporal Variability in Postclassical Northern Belize". [2]

Chase taught anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and West Chester University before gaining permanent employment at the University of Central Florida. [3]

From 1985 to 1995, Chase served as a guest curator for the Orlando Museum of Art.

In 2000, she was appointed the interdisciplinary coordinator of academic affairs at the University of Central Florida.

In 2003, she was awarded the honor of Pegasus Professor. [4] According to the office of the provost, "the Pegasus Professor Award recognizes a faculty member who has made a significant impact on the university and will have demonstrated excellence in teaching, research, and service." [5]

She has continued to take on administrative positions. She has served as interim assistant vice president of academic affairs, assistant vice president of academic affairs, the interim chair for the Department of Theatre in the College of Arts and Humanities, associate vice president of planning and evaluation for academic affairs, vice provost for academic affairs, and the interim provost and vice president of academic affairs.

In 2010, Chase was appointed executive vice provost for academic affairs of the University of Central Florida. In April 2014, she was appointed interim provost and vice president for academic affairs at the same institution. [6]

In 2015, Chase argued against eliminating three degree programs from the University of Central Florida's curriculum. [7]

In 2016, Chase was appointed executive vice president and provost at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV).

In 2019 Chase joined Claremont Graduate University as its vice president for academic innovation, student success, and strategic initiatives. In this role, she oversaw programs related to recruiting, admissions, onboarding, student experience, retention, graduation, and related student outcomes. [8]

She joined the University of Houston and University of Houston System in 2023 as senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, respectively. At UH, she has supported student success and faculty excellence initiatives, as well as the academic quality and accreditation of all four UH System institutions: UH, the University of Houston-Downtown, the University of Houston-Clear Lake and the University of Houston-Victoria. [9]


Archaeological career

Chase has been conducting archaeological excavations since the 1970s, with a focus on the Ancient Maya. From 1979 to 1985 she conducted archaeological excavations with her husband at Santa Rita, Corozal.

Since 1985, Chase and her husband have been the directors of the Caracol Archaeological Project in Belize. Their fieldwork conducted at Caracol over the past 30 years has resulted in significant contributions to the ongoing research into the Ancient Maya. Dr. Diane Chase has identified and excavated several burials. Significant finds at Caracol include the 1986 field season discovery of Altar 21, which recorded the defeat of Tikal by Caracol. The same year Altar 21 was discovered, two intact tombs were uncovered along with an intact tomb of a royal woman that was dated at 634 CE. Another royal tomb was discovered in 1993 that was dated to 537 CE.

In 2007, Chase and her husband, along with biologist John Weishampel, received a grant from NASA to conduct a canopy penetrating radar called LiDAR. LiDAR uses remote sensing to see through the canopy and penetrate the ground to detect the archaeological ruins beneath the canopy. [10]

Chase has authored and co-authored many literary publications on Mesoamerican archaeology. Her knowledge in the field of Mayan archaeology has led to television programs to feature her in documentaries featuring Mayan history and archaeology, including the television series Nova. Drs. Diane and Arlen Chase's archaeological fieldwork at Caracol included the stabilization of the structure Caana, the largest man-made structure in Belize. This led to the Belizean government to declare Caracol a National Park, and to pave a road into Caracol to allow for easier access for tourists. The site currently has nearly 100 visitors daily, even though it is located 52 miles from the nearest town. [11]

Diane Chase has successfully continued with her archaeological research while undertaking a series of administrative roles. Administratively, she is well known for her work on student success. [12] Archaeologically, the work that she and her husband Arlen Chase have undertaken has transformed our understanding of the ancient Maya in terms of their social and political organization [13] and in terms of the scale of ancient Maya urbanism. [14]

In 2023, Chase and her husband Arlen Chase were featured on CBS Saturday Morning discussing their long-term research at Caracol. [15] In that same year she also spearheaded the article “Mesoamerican Urbanism Revisited: Environmental Change, Adaptation, Resilience, Persistence, and Collapse” that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [16]

Personal life

She is married to Dr. Arlen F. Chase, who is also an archaeologist whose work focuses on the ancient Maya. Their eldest child, Adrian, is pursuing a career in Mesoamerican archaeology as well. [17] They have two other children: Aubrey and Elyse Chase. All three children have accompanied their parents to the archaeological site of Caracol in Belize, where they have been conducting excavations for over thirty years. [6]

Honors and awards

[6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xunantunich</span> Maya archaeological site in Belize

Xunantunich is an Ancient Maya archaeological site in western Belize, about 70 miles (110 km) west of Belize City, in the Cayo District. Xunantunich is located atop a ridge above the Mopan River, well within sight of the Guatemala border – which is 0.6 miles (1 km) to the west. It served as a Maya civic ceremonial centre to the Belize Valley region in the Late and Terminal Classic periods. At that time, when the region was at its peak, nearly 200,000 people lived in the Belize Valley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Eric S. Thompson</span> English Mesoamerican archaeologist (1898–1975)

Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson was a leading English Mesoamerican archaeologist, ethnohistorian, and epigrapher. While working in the United States, he dominated Maya studies and particularly the study of the Maya script until well into the 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maya ruins of Belize</span> Historically important pre-Columbian Maya archaeological sites

The Maya ruins of Belize include a number of well-known and historically important pre-Columbian Maya archaeological sites. Belize is considered part of the southern Maya lowlands of the Mesoamerican culture area, and the sites found there were occupied from the Preclassic until and after the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Hitt</span> American academic (1940–2023)

John C. Hitt was an American professor and academic administrator, who served as the fourth president of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida from 1992 to 2018. He was named the Orlando Sentinel's Central Floridian of the Year in 2005, and twice Orlando's most powerful person by Orlando Magazine. He was the dean of Florida's university presidents, as the longest tenured president in the state. His reputation was materially tarnished by auditor findings that tens of millions of dollars were improperly spent on construction during his tenure as president. He acknowledged the spending and resigned from his compensated fundraising role. His successor Dale Whittaker and the university's chief financial officer Bill Merck also resigned because of the scandal. Four other financial officers were fired.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ancient Maya cuisine</span> Diet of the Ancient Mesoamerican civilization

Ancient Maya cuisine was varied and extensive. Many different types of resources were consumed, including maritime, flora, and faunal material, and food was obtained or produced through strategies such as hunting, foraging, and large-scale agricultural production. Plant domestication concentrated upon several core foods, the most important of which was maize.

A star war was a decisive conflict between rival polities of the Maya civilization during the first millennium AD. The term comes from a specific type of glyph used in the Maya script, which depicts a star showering the earth with liquid droplets, or a star over a shell. It represents a verb but its phonemic value and specific meaning have not yet been deciphered. The name "star war" was coined by the epigrapher Linda Schele to refer to the glyph, and by extension to the type of conflict that it indicates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maya warfare</span> Warfare of the Mesoamerican civilization

Although the Maya were once thought to have been peaceful, current theories emphasize the role of inter-polity warfare as a factor in the development and perpetuation of Maya society. The goals and motives of warfare in Maya culture are not thoroughly understood, but scholars have developed models for Maya warfare based on several lines of evidence, including fortified defenses around structure complexes, artistic and epigraphic depictions of war, and the presence of weapons such as obsidian blades and projectile points in the archaeological record. Warfare can also be identified from archaeological remains that suggest a rapid and drastic break in a fundamental pattern due to violence.

Ancient Maya women had an important role in society: beyond propagating the culture through bearing and raising children, Maya women participated in economic, governmental, and farming activities. The lives of women in ancient Mesoamerica are not well documented: "Of the three elite founding area tombs discovered to date within the Copan Acropolis, two contain the remains of women, and yet there is not a single reference to a woman in either known contemporary texts or later retrospective accounts of Early Classic events and personages at Copan," writes a scholar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nohmul</span>

Nohmul is a pre-Columbian Maya archaeological site located on the eastern Yucatán Peninsula, in what is today northern Belize. The name Nohmul may be translated as "great mound" in Yucatec Maya. It is the most important Maya site in northern Belize. The site included a large pyramid, about 17 meters (56 ft) tall, built around 250 BC. Most of the pyramid was destroyed in May 2013 by contractors tearing it apart for rocks and gravel to use to fill roads, leaving only the core of the pyramid behind.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Santa Rita, Corozal</span>

Santa Rita is a Maya ruin and an archaeological reserve on the outskirts of Corozal, Belize. Historical evidence suggests that it was probably the ancient and important Maya city known as Chetumal.

Linton Satterthwaite Jr. (1897–1978) was a Maya archaeologist and epigrapher and is primarily associated with the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania. He is well known for his works at Caracol, Piedras Negras, Cahal Pech and Benque Viejo (Xunantunich).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arlen F. Chase</span> Mesoamerican archaeologist

Arlen F. Chase is a Mesoamerican archaeologist and a faculty member in the anthropology department at Pomona College, Claremont CA. Previously, he was a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and served a variety of administrative roles at the University of Central Florida over the course of his 32 year stay at that institution. He is noted for his long-term research at the ancient Maya city of Caracol, Belize and for exploring landscape traces of Maya civilization using lidar.

Pusilhá is an archaeological site in Belize. The location of this Late Classic Maya urban complex, along the east and west flow of trade, made the city a major transfer point for economic activities in the whole region. In addition, the city gave archaeologists a historical view of a secondary Maya site. Large and extended excavation efforts have changed the overall picture of Maya social and political relationships between larger and smaller cities and challenged the prevailing view of conquest and absorption of smaller cities into the larger cities in the region. The research conducted at Pusilhá began in 1927 and continues to this day.

Baking Pot is a Maya archaeological site located in the Belize River Valley on the southern bank of the river, northeast of modern-day town of San Ignacio in the Cayo District of Belize; it is 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) downstream from the Barton Ramie and Lower Dover archaeological sites. Baking Pot is associated with an extensive amount of research into Maya settlements, community-based archaeology, and of agricultural production; the site possesses lithic workshops, and possible evidence of cash-cropping cacao as well as a long occupation from the Preclassic through to the Postclassic period.

Kʼahkʼ Ujol Kʼinich I was a king of Maya city of Caracol in Belize, named after the Sun deity called Kinich Ahau. He is also known as Ruler I and Smoking Skull I. He reigned c. AD 470.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caracol</span> Maya archaeological site in Belize

Caracol is a large ancient Maya archaeological site, located in what is now the Cayo District of Belize. It is situated approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) south of Xunantunich, and the town of San Ignacio, and 15 km (9.3 mi) from the Macal River. It rests on the Vaca Plateau, at an elevation of 500 m (1,600 ft) above sea-level, in the foothills of the Maya Mountains. Long thought to be a tertiary center, it is now known that the site was one of the most important regional political centers of the Maya Lowlands during the Classic Period. Caracol covered approximately 200 square kilometres (77 sq mi), covering an area much larger than present-day Belize City, the largest metropolitan area in the country, and supported more than twice the modern city's population.

Jaime José Awe is a Belizean archaeologist who specializes in the ancient Maya, a Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University, and the Director of the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project.

Marilyn Masson is a Maya archaeologist whose research has focused on social transformation and political economy of ancient Mesoamerican cultures in Mexico and Belize. She is a professor of Mesoamerican archaeology at the University at Albany, SUNY. She is a co-director of the PEMY project at the site of Mayapan in the Northern Yucutan Peninsula of Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dzuluinicob</span> Postclassic Maya state from ca 11th cent to 1544

Dzuluinicob, or the Province of Dzuluinicob or Ts'ulwinikob, was a Postclassic Maya state in the Yucatán Peninsula of the Maya Lowlands.

References

  1. ↑ Stipes, Chris. ""Accomplished Academic Leader Diane Z. Chase Appointed as UH, UH System Chief Academic Officer, Provost."". University of Houston. Retrieved January 10, 2023.
  2. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-11-12. Retrieved 2015-11-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. ↑ "Curricula Vitae: Diane Zaino Chase" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-12.
  4. ↑ "Founders' Day: Past Pegasus Professors - UCF Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning". www.fctl.ucf.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-02.
  5. ↑ "Minutes, Board of Trustees Meeting; University of Central Florida; May 22, 2003" (PDF). University of Central Florida.
  6. 1 2 3 "Anthropology | People | Person Details". Archived from the original on 2012-03-06. Retrieved 2019-07-24.
  7. ↑ "What UCF programs are in jeopardy?". OrlandoSentinel.com. Retrieved 2015-11-02.
  8. ↑ "New VP will focus on 'entire student life cycle'". Claremont Graduate University. 2 August 2019.
  9. ↑ Stipes, Chris. ""Accomplished Academic Leader Diane Z. Chase Appointed as UH, UH System Chief Academic Officer, Provost."". University of Houston. Retrieved January 10, 2023.
  10. ↑ Chase, A. F., Chase, D. Z., Weishampel, J. F., Drake, J. B., Shrestha, R. L., Slatton, K., & ... Carter, W. E. (2011). Airborne LiDAR, archaeology, and the ancient Maya landscape at Caracol, Belize. Journal of Archaeological Science, 38(2), 387-398.
  11. ↑ "Home - Caracol Archaeological Project". Caracol Archaeological Project. Archived from the original on 2011-10-11. Retrieved 2011-10-13.
  12. ↑ Ezarik, Melissa. ""Student Success Champion: Q&A with Diane Chase, University of Houston."". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved February 15, 2024.
  13. ↑ Chase, Diane Z.; Chase, Arlen F. (2003). Mesoamerican Elites: An Archaeological Assessment by Diane Z. Chase, Arlen F. Chase. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 390. ISBN   9780806135427.
  14. ↑ Chase, Diane Z. and Arlen F. (May 2024). Ancient Mesoamerican Population History Urbanism, Social Complexity, and Change. The University of Arizona Press. p. 432. ISBN   9780816553198 . Retrieved February 15, 2024.
  15. ↑ Glor, Jeff; Breen, Kerry (March 18, 2023). "Couple work to unearth secrets of lost Mayan civilization". CBS News. CBS News. Retrieved February 13, 2024.
  16. ↑ Chase, Diane Z.; Chase, Arlen F. (May 2024). Ancient Mesoamerican Population History Urbanism, Social Complexity, and Change. The University of Arizona Press. ISBN   9780816553198.
  17. ↑ "ASU Directory Profile: Adrian Chase". webapp4.asu.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-02.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.