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William Fash is the William and Muriel Seabury Howells
Director of the Peabody Museum and the Charles P. Bowditch
Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology and
Ethnology at Harvard University.
Fash received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University
in 1983. He worked on archaeological digs in Arizona and
in Mexico before coming to Harvard and joining Professor
Gordon Willey’s project in Copán, Honduras,
in 1977. He and his wife Barbara have been working at Copán
ever since, in a series of multi-institutional, multi-national,
and interdisciplinary research efforts devoted to illuminating
all aspects of ancient Mayan life and culture history at
one of its most renowned ancient cities. Since 1985, Fash
has directed the Copán Mosaics Project, succeeded
in 1988 by the Copán Acropolis Archaeological Project,
and most recently the Copán Sculpture Museum Project.
For his efforts, he was awarded the Order of José Cecilio
del Valle in 1994 and selected to succeed his mentor, Gordon
Willey, as Bowditch Professor in that same year.
He is the author of Scribes, Warriors,
and Kings (1991),
History Carved in Stone (1992, with Ricardo Agurcia), Visions
of the Maya Past (1995, with Ricardo Agurcia), and The
Future of the Maya Past (forthcoming, with Barbara Fash).
Fash served as director of the Copán Acropolis
Archaeological Project (1988-1995), a multi-disciplinary
research program involving the crosscutting methodologies
and questions of archaeologists, epigraphers, art historians,
conservators, and architects. He founded and directed
the Harvard Field School in Maya Archaeology at Copán,
providing archaeological experience and mentorship for
students from a variety of schools; this effort also has
served to raise awareness for these budding scholars of
the importance of cross-cultural collaboration and archaeological
conservation. With Barbara Fash, he spearheaded efforts
to conceive, design, and construct the Sculpture Museum
in Copán, Honduras, which showcases the magnificent
cultural heritage from this site. This museum has proved
important to local pride and understanding, to the draw
of the ruins as a tourist destination (important to the
local economy), and to the cultural patrimony of Honduras
and Mesoamerica as a whole.
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