Julie Hoggarth

Transcript

Derek Smith:
Hello, and welcome to Baylor Connections, a conversation series with the people shaping our future. Each week we go in depth with Baylor leaders, professors, and more, discussing important topics in higher education, research, and student life.
I'm Derek Smith, and today we're talking anthropology and archeology with Dr. Julie Hoggarth. Julie Hoggarth is a Baylor anthropologist and archeologist, and she's a recognized expert on Maya societal development and decline and the impact of climate on ancient cultures.
She has uncovered insights that yield understanding for us today, and she was recently awarded a prestigious honor. Dr. Hoggarth was named a 2024 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a prestigious lifetime honor for scientists who move their fields forward for the benefits of society.
It's an exciting honor and you do a lot of exciting work as we get to really kind of travel the world with you here, Julie, as we visit here. First off, just thanks so much for taking the time to join us, and congratulations on your fellowship.

Julie Hoggarth:
Thanks for having me. I'm very happy to be here.

Derek Smith:
Well, it's great to have you here and talk about your work. And I think one question I have is what other people ask you, I'm curious, when you tell people you're an archeologist, are there some common questions or responses that you receive that you're always ready to answer?

Julie Hoggarth:
Well, some people think that archeologists dig up dinosaurs, so I have to dispel that rumor a lot. What archeologists actually do is study past societies and their cultures using the artifacts that we find to answer questions about what people did in the past. So that's the biggest question I usually answer.

Derek Smith:
Well, that and other things, are there areas you enjoy sort of getting the chance to educate people on as it relates to your work?

Julie Hoggarth:
Yeah, actually several times I've worked with a couple of elementary groups, and the funnest thing is they're just curious. People are curious about the past, they want to relate to what did people do in the past and how can I understand those people? So that's the funnest part.

Derek Smith:
Well, it's pretty cool the work you do. Where are some of the places that that work takes you around the world?

Julie Hoggarth:
Well, I predominantly work in Belize, but I do a little bit of other collaborative research with other archeologists who work in North America, and increasingly, perhaps Southeast Asia.

Derek Smith:
Very cool. Very cool. I know Belize is where a lot of the work that you do takes place as you study Maya culture, and we're going to talk about that here on the program.
But before we get too far again, Julie, congratulations on your American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellowship, a really prestigious honor. I'm curious, when did you learn about this and what was your response to finding that out?

Julie Hoggarth:
Well, I found out this past fall, and my overall response was simply gratitude. Gratitude for the people who mentored me, who worked with me, and who helped me get into the field of archeology. One thing about archeology is it's inherently collaborative, so this honor simply made me want to thank those who've helped me get where I am today.

Derek Smith:
Well, you certainly do that, and it's an exciting honor, and I'm curious, having this honor now, how does that impact your work going forward?

Julie Hoggarth:
Well, for me, it gives me an increased drive to want to give back to our field. I'd like to really try to offer, for example, maybe some educational opportunities for some of our Belizean students who might otherwise not have those opportunities and who wish to be archeologists.
I think that in the future, I think our Department of Anthropology might be in the ideal place for Belizeans to come to be trained in Maya archeology. Another thing is I'd really like to branch some of my research out into other parts of the world and study the ways that societies adapt to environmental change.

Derek Smith:
That's great. Well, that sounds like a great opportunity and an obvious connection there when you talk about the work you do in Belize. I'm excited to see that grow as we visit with Dr. Julie Hoggarth here on Baylor Connections. And you mentioned this award is for scientists who have contributed to their field and society. How would you describe what you've been able to contribute in anthropology?

Julie Hoggarth:
Well, my methodological focus is in radiocarbon dating, and as such, I work on developing archeological chronology. So the important thing that we need to know is when did things happen? Right? That's really important to be able to place actions and behaviors in time.
So essentially, I try to relate cultural and environmental changes together. Right? How do environmental changes relate to what people were doing? How are people adapting to environmental changes? And some of that work is focused on narrowing down the timing for the abandonment of HMI cities.
I've also studied historic documents about droughts, particularly trying to understand how periods of severe drought relate to population changes, changes in food prices of staples, in this case for the Maya area it'd be corn, which may suggest food scarcity if the prices go up pretty high.
And then also I looked at other historic records on burials and baptisms to assess whether the population was growing or shrinking during these periods of drought. So essentially trying to understand the question of do droughts in the Maya area cause either socio-political or demographic crises?

Derek Smith:
So you are, obviously you're traveling to Belize, you're digging in the earth and you're uncovering artifacts, but you're also cross-referencing these things with historic documents about whether really, I guess probably all kinds of documents that probably a lot of us wouldn't even think about.

Julie Hoggarth:
Yeah, it's really fun. And the historic data is important because it tells us about how the modern Maya would have adapted to similar challenges as the ancient Maya.
Now of course, the colonial Maya would have had slightly different lifestyles, but they're still living off of maize agriculture, right? Corns, beans, and squash. So even though we have changes in the colonial period, we can still get some information about how the Maya would've adapted to droughts.

Derek Smith:
Julie, why are the Maya such an interesting group to study? Why are they the right group for you to really focus such a big part of your career on?

Julie Hoggarth:
Well, the Maya are an interesting civilization. They are living in tropical environments. They are building grand cities. They're living their lives just like everyday people. Right? And so I think the public have always had a fascination with the ancient Maya because they can really relate to them, because they see this advanced society that essentially at some point broke down, and people are curious about those processes.

Derek Smith:
You mentioned that they faced challenges, obviously, ultimately, you said the society broke down. What are some of the challenges that they faced that are so applicable today?

Julie Hoggarth:
Well, there's a lot of different things that are inherent in the collapse of ancient Maya civilization. First thing to note is that it wasn't only drought and it wasn't only environment. We see chronologically that there are, let's say, cracks in the system fairly early on that relate to political stress in society.
And once we finally do see evidence for drought, that is in combination with the political stress, the economic changes with shifts in trade routes to finally get to the socio-political breakdown, the demographic abandonment of these cities.
So it's a really intricate process, right? It's not just one thing that contributed to. I think people are interested in that and trying to get to the root of that. It's really been a question that Maya archeologists have been working on for quite a long time.

Derek Smith:
As you visit, I think I, like a lot of people, are fascinated by just the process of where do you begin as you dig, as you find things? So if you would, take us inside as you travel to Belize. What are some of the ways that you, over the years, hone in on on areas in which to dig? What are some of the ways that you approach that? Just kind of take us inside through your eyes some of the work that you get to do that I think holds so much intrigue to a lot of us who are outside of that area.

Julie Hoggarth:
Well, as scientists, we start with our research questions. So where we dig is completely contingent on what questions we're trying to answer.
So for example, if we're interested in studying what the ancient Maya farmers were doing, we go out and we put our excavation units at the houses in the settlement areas where the people were living and farming.
To get a sense of the lives of everyday Maya farmers, that would be an important aspect to understand. If we're interested in more the breakdown in the political structures, we might be more interested in excavating in the downtown areas of a site.
So we might excavate, for example, perhaps the palace of a site. So I've been working at the palace at the site of Baking Pot in Belize for several years to try to understand essentially the processes of when was the royal court established and when do we see the end of it? When did the rulers leave the site? And how does that relate to when the farmers left the site?
So where you set up your units and where you excavate is completely contingent on the questions that you're asking. And then of course we use archeological evidence that we find to try to answer those questions.

Derek Smith:
This is Baylor Connections. We are visiting with Dr. Julie Hoggarth. Dr. Hoggarth is an anthropologist and archeologist at Baylor, recently named a 2024 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
So take us inside, if you would, you tell us a little bit about where you're looking when looking to answer different questions. What are you looking for as you and your students dig? What are the things that stand out that you say, "Okay, this is something that we want to investigate further, that we wanted to study further"?

Julie Hoggarth:
Well, it really depends on exactly where we're digging and what we're finding. And really, every little bit of the archeological record is important, right?
So let's say we're excavating in a plaza, right? The main open area in a ceremonial center in the Maya area. We might be interested in looking for evidence of activity in that plaza, we might be looking for evidence that indicates when they abandoned the plaza.
So for example, in many Maya sites, when the Maya were abandoning a location, they would break large quantities of ceramics and also make as a ritual offering, also in those deposits we find not only broken ceramics but also animal bones and broken manos and metates for processing food and sometimes musical instruments and all sorts of different items.
But essentially if we find something like that, let's say we only find a part of it, we want to see the whole deposit. So we want to see the whole context for what we're looking for.
So in the case of when we have been locating these abandonment deposits, if we find just the edge of one, we would want to extend our excavation units to open up that whole deposit to try to understand the processes of the deposition of when did they make this termination ritual? What is in the deposit itself? And what does that tell us about the abandonment of the use of the ceremonial space?
So yeah, when we're finding things, the kind of rationale between what we do in terms of where we dig and what we're finding is essentially if we find a little bit of something, we want to get a bigger picture of it. So oftentimes when we find just the edge of a feature, we'll open up our excavation units larger so we can see exactly what we're looking at.

Derek Smith:
So Julie, so when you find some of these artifacts in an area and you kind of cross-reference that with what you know about Mayan culture, ceremonial ceremonies they might hold, take us inside how you sort of cross-reference what it looks like. Maybe you find a dish or a glass or something along those lines. How do you then tie that together to really interpret something from that era? How do those things that might just look like an old glass to most of us out there, how do you kind of pull the string to uncover what it really tells us?

Julie Hoggarth:
Right. Yeah, if we find pottery, we might ask a question like what type of pottery is this? Is it a dish? Is it a jar? Is it a plate? Is it a bowl? And then from there, you can go on to ask bigger questions.
So for example, you might say, "How many bowls do we have as opposed to jars?" And what that does is it allows us to get to the behavior. And as archeologists, we're interested in past people and what they did. So getting at the behavior is important.
So let's say you find more jars than bowls. That would tell you that this location might have more of a storage function, right? People storing, it could be water for example, or other items in these storage jars.
So when we're essentially looking at the artifacts of the past, we can use every little bit, even the type of pottery it is, to answer questions about what people did. And then from there we might relate that finding of finding more jars to other broader cultural or environmental factors.
So for example, why would people be storing more water during this time? Essentially, you can relate that to environmental changes. You can also relate it to social changes like perhaps their family's size increased so they had more need of water. So it's not always environmental. That's something that's very important to note is that social changes are just as important as environmental changes, and we have to balance the two when we're looking at the past.

Derek Smith:
For you, as you share your work, where are some of the places that these findings are distributed so that obviously you and your fellow anthropologists learn from one another as you contribute to, your scholarly contributions go into the record, but where are some of the places that that filters out so that we can apply what we've learned from the past to the present and the future?

Julie Hoggarth:
Yeah. Right. That's a great question. So I think a lot of the work that archeologists do is particularly focused on publishing their work in scientific journals, for example. But there is an increasing push to try to bring the public more into the foray and be part of the learning process, and also make our research relevant to modern decision-making.
So first let's talk about the public. There's many arenas where we can engage with the public. Part of that is in our outreach programs. So when we do our research, we try to make sure that we disseminate that research to the local public.
So for example, that would be going to Belize and making sure that people in Belize know the findings of our work. So we do that through the local Archeology Symposium in Belize, we do that through giving lectures to the tour guides who essentially share archeological stories with tourists, right?
So those folks are the ones who are really wanting these really compelling stories about the past. So tour guides can be some of the biggest venues for educating the public by telling the stories about the past. We also, oftentimes we'll work with local universities or local schools to try to make sure that the research that we're finding gets into the public domain.
We also sometimes will work with the media. So for example, just a couple years ago, our project worked with the documentary maker and put out a documentary on the Maya. And that's a way that we distribute our information widely to the public not just in Belize, but also broader all around the world to anyone who's interested in the ancient Maya. That really gets the information out there.
And then in terms of trying to make sure our work makes a difference, there's an increasing push in archeology to try to think about the ways that archeological lessons might be helpful to modern decision-making.
So there are some increasing efforts to try to deliver the results of archeological research to, for example, decision-makers on, for example, climate change. If your research is on climate change in the past, you might be able to provide some information about how the ancient Maya responded to climate change in the past.
And that might be interesting for people making decisions about climate change today, especially if they're trying to develop local policies that are specific to the region that you're studying, right? So not just try to apply these lessons for the entire world, they're most relevant to the areas that you focus that research in. So for in my case, it would be in the Maya area. The lessons from the Maya are probably the most relevant to these decision-makers for societies in the Maya area.

Derek Smith:
That makes sense. That makes sense. That's pretty exciting as we visit with Dr. Julie Hoggarth.
And Julie, as we head in the final few minutes here, I want to ask you, the work that you and your students are doing, what most has your attention these days and where are some of the places that that's taking your work next?

Julie Hoggarth:
Well, I'm currently working on a couple of large projects, again, on radiocarbon dating, I talked about that as my methodological focus, trying to really pin down the timing for both the socio-political collapse and the demographic collapse into my societies in Western Belize.
And so a lot of those projects are currently occupying my time, trying to really get a sense of when do we start to see populations decline? When do we start to see the political systems decline, and how do they relate to broader environmental changes? Because again, it's not just environment, it's society, it's politics, it's economics. So how do all these different changes in the social and environmental systems work together? So that's a really big focus in my research right now.
And I'm also working on projects related to better understanding processes of long-term sustainability. So trying to understand what made the Maya be able to persist in their tropical landscape for so long, right? They farmed their landscapes for thousands of years very successfully. So it's not just always a case of that the Maya collapsed. There's also a story there of long-term sustainability, and I think that that's really important, an important story to tell too. So I've been working a lot on sustainability issues.

Derek Smith:
Absolutely. That is important. And when are you headed abroad next? You're heading out this summer, what does your schedule look like?

Julie Hoggarth:
I am leaving in six days to go to Belize, so I am just preparing right now to be able to leave very shortly, and I'm looking forward to another great field season.

Derek Smith:
That's great. How long do you stay down there when you're there in the summer?

Julie Hoggarth:
Say about two months. Yeah, usually two months. Yeah. The majority of the summer just to get as much excavation in as possible.
It also, we go during the rainy season, which makes it a little hard because we have to battle first the really dry part of the summer and then the rain starts, so that kind of complicates things, but we're still usually able to work under tarps, and that's great still, but it's usually a fun time.

Derek Smith:
Well, that's great. Well, we'll look forward to seeing the results of that. Wishing you all safe travels and a really fruitful season there in Belize.
And Julie, I want to thank you for taking the time to share with us today. And again, congratulations on your fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a really great honor, and we're excited to see that for you, and thanks for taking the time to share.

Julie Hoggarth:
Thank you.

Derek Smith:
Julie Hoggarth, a Baylor anthropologist and archeologist, and an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow, our guest today on Baylor Connections.
I'm Derek Smith. A reminder you can hear this and other programs online at baylor.edu/connections, and you can subscribe on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.