About

Andrew K. Scherer is a Pierre and Patricia Bikai Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology and the Ancient World, as well as a Professor of Archaeology and the Ancient World and the Director of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University. He is an anthropological archaeologist and biological anthropologist with a geographic focus on Mesoamerica, particularly the Maya. Scherer co-directs an interdisciplinary archaeological research project exploring Classic Maya polities along the Usumacinta River in Mexico and Guatemala. His bioarchaeological research has been conducted at numerous Maya sites throughout Mexico and Guatemala, including Lacanja Tzeltal, Piedras Negras, Tikal, El Zotz, and Yaxha. His research interests encompass mortuary archaeology, bioarchaeology, landscape archaeology, ritual practice, warfare and violence, political practice, and diet and subsistence. Scherer has authored and edited several influential books and volumes, notably 'As the Gods Kill: Morality and Social Violence among the Precolonial Maya' and 'Mortuary Landscapes of the Classic Maya: Rituals of Body and Soul.' His scholarly work contributes significantly to understanding Maya social and political organization, ritual practices, and violence, integrating archaeological, bioarchaeological, and landscape perspectives.

Research topics

• Archaeology
• Computer Science
• Geography
• Geology
• Remote sensing
• History
• Environmental resource management
• Environmental science
• Physical geography
• Ancient history
• Civil engineering
• Ecology
• Engineering
• Biology

Selected publications

• Building the Housing Justice Pipeline: Law Schools’ Role in the Right to Counsel Movement

  eYLS (Yale Law School) · 2025-10-01

  articleOpen access

  Dear Colleagues,Here's why we surveyed law schools to see the extent to which they are teaching the skills and doctrine needed to represent tenants, and why we issued this report.Our homes couldn't be more critical to our fundamental well-being.A home is our place in the world, the place where we center our lives, our families, our work, our children's education, our friendships, our community.Evictions wrest people-often the most vulnerable-from their homes and have devastating consequences.They lead to homelessness with all its attendant short-and long-term negative effects.And even when evicted tenants avert homelessness, they suffer-families are torn apart, children lose valuable schooling, jobs are lost, and physical and mental health are harmed.Evictions are among the harshest orders of our civil courts.They result from rapid-fire "summary proceedings" that involve complex substantive and procedural issues.They take place before overworked judges in overcrowded courtrooms.And while study after study shows that lawyers make a dispositive difference in outcome, keeping people in their homes, securing repairs, reducing court filings, most tenants face eviction without legal representation.But change is happening.In one of the biggest steps forward for equal justice in a generation, New York City passed groundbreaking legislation in 2017 that provides a right to counsel for low-income tenants facing eviction.And the movement for the right to counsel for tenants has been spreading rapidly.Similar laws have been adopted or proposed in scores of additional jurisdictions, including states, counties, and cities.Thousands of evictiondefense jobs have already been created to implement these new laws and the need for talented, well-trained, committed lawyers to roll up their sleeves and do the work is growing exponentially.Law schools, quite obviously, have a pivotal role to play in preparing students to enter this fast-expanding field of law.We are issuing this report to take stock of how the law school community is undertaking that role, and to encourage even greater effort.Happily, our survey shows that the law school community has been doing its part-over half of the schools that responded to the survey already have clinics and other instruction that prepares students for this important work, and much of this instruction was initiated in the years since NYC's groundbreaking law passed.This is cause for celebration, but we hope the main takeaway from this report will be the recognition that more can and must be done.Much more.Many people had a hand in developing this report, but special thanks are due to Erica Braudy, Coordinator of the New York Law School

  PublisherOA PDF

• A Teotihuacan altar at Tikal, Guatemala: central Mexican ritual and elite interaction in the Maya Lowlands

  Antiquity · 2025-04-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  The nature and extent of interactions between the distant regions and cultures of Mesoamerica remain open to much debate. Close economic and political ties developed between Teotihuacan and the lowland Maya during the Early Classic period (AD 250–550), yet the relationship between these cultures continues to perplex scholars. This article presents an elaborately painted altar from an elite residential group at the lowland Maya centre of Tikal, Guatemala. Dating to the fifth century AD, the altar is unique in its display of Teotihuacan architectural and artistic forms, adding to evidence not only for cultural influence during this period, but also for an active Teotihuacan presence at Tikal.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Childness, Humanness, and Violence among the Classic Maya Elite

  Childhood in the Past · 2025-11-11

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Suitability Models of Ancient Maya Agriculture in the Upper Usumacinta River Basin of Mexico and Guatemala

  Latin American Antiquity · 2024-12-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Recent archaeological and remote sensing research in the Maya Lowlands has demonstrated evidence for extensive modification of the landscape in the forms of channeled fields and upland terraces. Scholars often assume these measures were taken primarily to intensify maize production; however, paleoethnobotany highlights a greater diversity of crops grown by the precolonial Maya. This study combines the growth requirements of 18 crops cultivated by ancient Maya farmers with lidar and other geospatial data in a suitability model that maps optimal areas for growth. These 18 crops cluster into five groups of crops with similar growth requirements. Across the study region, different groupings of crops had different suitability in and around different ancient Maya centers and agricultural features. This spatial variation in suitability reflects the heterogeneity of land resources and adaptations and contributes to existing conversations about economic and settlement organization in the study area. The results of this study serve as a foundation for future field studies and more complex spatial models.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• War, Captive-Taking and Warriors in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

  2024-01-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter starts with a brief overview of Mesoamerica, followed by broad comment on the nature of war and violent conflict in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, highlighting the commonalities and key differences among its most well-known and best studied societies. By doing so this chapter touches on the central question, why did indigenous Mesoamericans go to war? The chapter then focuses on the role of captive-taking in the origins and consequences of Mesoamerican warfare and concludes with an overview of the warriors who fought in ancient Mesoamerican conflicts.

  PublisherDOI

• The Maya Landscape of El Infiernito, Chiapas, Mexico: Comparison of Occupied and Unoccupied Airborne LiDAR Mapping Systems

  Remote Sensing · 2024-11-27

  articleOpen access

  Landscape-oriented approaches in archaeology have moved beyond site-based research to interpret how people have engaged with, modified, and constructed the environment and how the legacies of these activities continue to influence land use. In the Maya Lowlands, landscape archaeology is related to the analysis of settlement patterns, households, agricultural intensification, and water management. The increasing availability of LiDAR data has revolutionized the mapping of archaeological landscapes under vegetation, especially in tropical environments like the Maya Lowlands, but researchers still emphasize site-oriented settlement densities and infrastructure. Furthermore, the accessibility of drone-based LiDAR platforms has the potential to collect data across several seasons or years to facilitate change detection. In this paper, we compare three LiDAR datasets collected from 2018 to 2023, using both occupied and unoccupied airborne systems. The landscape surrounding the archaeological site of El Infiernito, Chiapas, Mexico near the Classic period (AD 250–800) dynastic capital of Piedras Negras, Guatemala was selected to compare these LiDAR datasets in the context of prior, extensive ground-based fieldwork. These data were used to interpret the built environment, land use, hydrology, landscapes of movement, and other infrastructure constructed and modified by several communities beginning in the Late Preclassic period (400 BC–AD 250) to the present. When used alongside systematic survey and ground verification, the combination of several LiDAR platforms to collect data across different seasons at El Infiernito enhanced the understanding of the spatial distribution of archaeological sites and features across the karst landscape.

  PublisherDOI

• Soil development and ancient Maya land use in the tropical karst landscape: Case of Busiljá, Chiapas, México

  Soil Science Society of America Journal · 2024-07-02 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The soil mantle of the tropical karstic landscapes of Southern Mexico was shaped by specific processes of pedogenesis and long‐term human impacts of ancient Maya agriculture. To understand the interaction between natural and human‐induced soil‐forming processes in the calcareous mountains of Chiapas state, we studied soil toposequences around the Classic Maya site of Budsilhá and related them to the archaeological evidence of settlement and land‐use distribution. Soil chemical analysis, micromorphological observations, and clay mineral identification were carried out in key soil profiles at the main geoforms. Limestone hills are occupied by shallow Rendolls which are usually perceived as incipient soils. However, high content of silicate clay composed of kaolinite and vermiculite and ferruginous clayey soil material observed at macro‐ and microscale backed the hypothesis that these soils were formed from the residues of thick Terra Rossa after their erosion. Swampy lowlands are occupied by thick clayey gleyic soils with clay mineral assemblages similar to those in the upland Rendolls. We suppose that the mineral matrix of the lowland soils is largely derived from the pedosediments of eroded upland Terra Rossa, which lost original ferruginous pigmentation and aggregation due to redoximorphic processes. Some wetland soils contain neoformed gypsum that is atypical for humid tropics; sulfide‐sulfate transformation under fluctuating redox conditions could promote gypsum synthesis. Ancient Maya land use was closely related to soil‐geomorphic conditions: settlements with homegardens occupied calcareous hills, whereas the primary agricultural domain was developed on lowland soils after their drainage by artificial canals.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Man of Macabilero

  University Press of Florida eBooks · 2024-07-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The Man of Macabilero, known to archaeologists as Macabilero Burial 3, lived through the eighth and ninth century AD Classic period collapse of Piedras Negras, a dynastic polity capital located 13.5 km north from his grave. Aspects of his early life are glimpsed through cranial and dental modification, while stable isotope analysis provides a window into dietary practices near the end of his life. Overall, his skeleton shows evidence of both trauma and resilience, and his story likely echoes that of many men and women who lived and died along the Usumacinta River in centuries past.

  PublisherDOI

• The Man of Macabilero:

  University of Florida Press eBooks · 2024-06-28 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Regional household variation and inequality across the Maya landscape

  Journal of Anthropological Archaeology · 2023-10-07 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Warfare and Polity in the Region of La Mar, Chiapas, Mexico

  NSF · $43k · 2011–2015

Frequent coauthors

• Charles J. Golden

  Children's Hospital of Orange County

  92 shared

• Chris Balzotti

  Brigham Young University

  37 shared

• Richard E. Terry

  Arnot Ogden Medical Center

  37 shared

• Whittaker Schroder

  23 shared

• Stephen Houston

  John Brown University

  20 shared

• Shanti Morell‐Hart

  Brown University

  20 shared

• Joshua T. Schnell

  16 shared

• Timothy Murtha

  University of North Carolina at Charlotte

  15 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Anthropology

  University of Texas

  2025

• M.A., Anthropology

  University of Texas

  2015

• B.A., Anthropology

  University of Texas

Awards & honors

• National Science Foundation Senior Research Grant (2015)
• National Science Foundation Senior Research Grant (2011)
• National Geographic Society/Waitt Grant Program (2009)
• National Science Foundation Senior Research Grant (2007)
• H. John Heinz III Charitable Trust Grants for Latin American…