Kinkella’ s Exploration of Mayan Ruins Makes USA Today
Moorpark College Anthropologist Andrew Kinkella was quoted as an expert on the ancient Mayan underwater caves in Belize in the July 6 edition of USA Today. Kinkella will be completing his doctoral work this summer at UC Riverside in archaeology. His thesis is entitled, “Draw of the Sacred Water: An Archaeological Survey of the Ancient Mayan Settlement at the Cara Blanca Pools, Belize.”
“The pools were used by the Mayans as a portal to commune with ancestors,” Kinkella said. Kinkella has explored the pools each summer since 1997 working with archaeologist Lisa Lucero who was also quoted in USA Today. He and Lucero have authored numerous academic articles and he was her Field Director in Belize and did underwater exploration of the pools under her permit. "We think [certain buildings] were sweat lodges," Kinkella says, “places of purification before offerings were made to the pools.”
USA Today reported, “In a survey last year led by archaeologist Andrew Kinkella of Moorpark (Calif.) College, field researchers mapped … the pools and identified … a few small buildings near the pools that could yield artifacts in the future explorations....”
Kinkella often dives the pools and has recovered some of these artifacts. Last summer he was chased onto the shore by a crocodile as he angled a weighted line into the pool to measure its depth. Despite the crocodile, and with his dissertation done, Kinkella hopes to return to Belize next summer as a part of the research team previewed in the USA Today article. |