Science Cafe Orlando

When Arlen and Diane Chase first traveled to Caracol in 1983, the city was completely covered by Belizean jungle. In more than 25 years of research, the Chases, husband-and-wife anthropologists at the University of Central Florida, have pieced together what Diane describes as “a much more complete story about Caracol,” one of the largest Maya cities. Through stable isotope analysis they can tell you what Caracol’s residents ate — which residents had a high-maize, high-protein diet, and which didn’t — and they can also tell you how the relatively uniform distribution of pottery suggests a strong sense of shared identity across social classes.