Before founding the PCE, Glover and Rissolo made their first visit to Vista Alegre in 2002. They were canoeing the north coast with Byron Kirkpatrick and testing the viability of canoeing inland via Sabana Zanja. While the mission to canoe inland via Sabana Zanja was not successful, this did give them a taste of life on the coast. Glover and Rissolo next returned to Vista Alegre in 2005 with Sam Meacham and Carrie Furman. Thanks to FAMSI support, they were able to map the major architecture at the site. While these data were part of Glover’s dissertation research, this is the trip that got Glover and Rissolo really interested in try to understand what life was like for the past inhabitants of this stretch of coast.
The PCE began in 2006 under the direction of Drs. Jeffrey Glover and Dominique Rissolo. Glover and Rissolo both started research in northern Quintana as members of the Yalahau Regional Human Ecology Project, while graduate students at the University of California, Riverside and have been conducting archaeological work in the area for 20+ years. When the PCE started it was initially focused on the archaeology of the north coast, but it quickly became apparent to Glover and Rissolo that they would need a more diverse group of researchers and a broader research agenda if they were going to be able to understand the complex relationships between the ancient Maya inhabitants, their natural environment, and their broader social, political, and economic spheres of interaction. To this end, Glover and Rissolo assembled an interdisciplinary research team composed of a coastal ecologist (Derek Smith), a coastal geoarchaeologist (Beverly Goodman and her PhD student Roy Jaijel), and a hydrogeochemist (Patricia Beddows). They received a one-year grant from NOAA’s Office of Exploration and Research (OER) and conducted a pilot study in 2011 at the ancient Maya port site of Vista Alegre. The results of this project revealed a rising sea level over the past 3000 years, fluctuating access to freshwater, and tantalizing evidence of past storm events. Since 2011, Glover and Rissolo have begun research at the neighboring Maya site of Conil, a site reported by early Spanish conquistadors to have had 5000 houses. In 2015, this team was awarded a 3-year grant from the National Science Foundation and expanded work in the area. In 2016, the PCE team conducted 4 months of field research at Vista Alegre and in 2017, the team turned its focus to Conil for 2 months of field research. Since 2017, the team has been active in the lab and has been conducting analyses of the diverse datasets produced by this interdisciplinary team.