Lisa Lucero

Lisa Lucero
is a ClimateCultures Author

A professor of Anthropology focusing on how Maya and other societies dealt with climate change: the emergence and demise of political power, ritual and water management.


Lisa J Lucero is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. She received a B.A. in Anthropology from Colorado State University. She then went on to receive her M.A. and Ph.D. in Archaeology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Lisa's interests focus on the emergence and demise of political power, ritual, water management, climate change and sustainability, and the Classic Maya. She has been conducting archaeology projects in Belize for almost 30 years; her most recent project involves exploring cenotes (collapsed sinkholes fed by groundwater) for ancient Maya offerings and evidence for climate and landscape histories.

Lisa served on the American Anthropological Association Task Force on Climate Change and has been elected as President of the Archaeology Division of the American Anthropological Association (2017-2019). Working with other tropical scholars, she focuses on how past societies dealt with climate change, including participating in climate change and sustainability with UNESCO Mexico.


Lisa's ClimateCultures posts

A Cosmology of Conservation: Ancient Maya Environmentalism

A Cosmology of Conservation: Ancient Maya Environmentalism

Anthropologist Lisa J. Lucero shares a talk she recorded specially for ClimateCultures, drawing on her extensive archaeological research into how ancient Maya culture adapted to environmental change, and whose non-anthropocentric cosmology can help us rethink our own worldview. Read More
Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Maya Kings

Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Maya Kings

Anthropologist Lisa Lucero researches the emergence and demise of political power, ritual and water management among the Classic Maya. Her most recent project explores collapsed groundwater sinkholes for evidence of ancient Maya offerings and climate and landscape histories. 1,210 Read More