Rodrigo Solinis-Casparius, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology

University of Illiniois at Chicago 

Co-curator of Field Museum

Abstract:

People move. When we do, we shape our cities by creating networks of movement behaviors in the form of trails, roads and pathways. This is true on every urban settlement in our planet. Thus, ancient settlements and their ancient roads are essential to understand the roles that movement plays in the spatial configuration of a city and the daily life of its residents. Here, I present a novel approach to identify and study >1,000-year-old pathways using remote sensing (lidar), computational analyses, and traditional archaeological work like survey and excavation in a massive Mesoamerican urban center in Western Mexico.

Bio:

Rodrigo Solinis-Casparius is a Mexican archaeologist and assistant professor at the Anthropology Department of University of Illinois at Chicago. He is actively directing two field projects in West Mexico. One of them, funded by NSF is looking at burial practices and pyramid complexes at Angamuco Michoacan to understand the formation of the Purepecha Empire. The other project focuses on studying ancient commuting and roads for the National Geographic. He works with roads, lasers, and computers. He has written and is actively writing several things about all this.