Meet our Autumn 2026 Tinker Visiting Professor

It is our pleasure to present our incoming Tinker Visiting Professor for Autumn 2026:

Bárbara Arroyo is a Research Associate at the Museo Popol Vuh of the Universidad Francisco Marroquín and an archaeologist specializing in early sedentary communities and social complexity in Mesoamerica. For the last fifteen years, she has led the Kaminaljuyu Archaeological Project, overseeing fieldwork, training programs, and initiatives to conserve earthen monuments. She obtained her B.A. in Archaeology from Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Vanderbilt University.

Arroyo’s research covers the Pacific coast of Chiapas, Guatemala, and El Salvador, with additional archaeological work in Dos Pilas and northern Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. Her scholarship focuses on the origins of sedentary villages, ceramic production, monumentality, and the development of social complexity in ancient Mayan societies. She has been a Senior Fellow and Research Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. Her contributions to archaeology have been recognized with honors, including the Ordre des Palmes Académiques from the French government and a Presidential Recognition from the Society for American Archaeology. In 2022, she was elected as an international honorary member to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her most recent recognition was at the Shanghai Archaeology Forum in December 2025, when her Kaminaljuyu project was awarded a Field Discovery Award.

Professor Arroyo will be teaching the workshop Shared Pasts: Collaborative Archaeology in Mesoamerica and the Andes.