Anabel Ford

Anabel Ford
Born	22 December 1951 Los Angeles County, California
Residence	Santa Barbara, California
Nationality	American
Fields	anthropologist archaeologist scholar
Alma mater	University of California, Santa Barbara
Known for	discovery of El Pilar, Maya civilization archaeology

Anabel Ford (born 22 December 1951) is an American archaeologist specializing in the study of Mesoamerica, with a focus on the lowland Maya of Belize and Guatemala. She is recognized for her discovery of the ancient Maya city El Pilar. Ford is currently affiliated with the Institute of Social Behavioral and Economic Research (ISBER) and is the director of the MesoAmerican Research Center (MARC) at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Ford was born the oldest of three children, all of whom were born in Los Angeles. Her father, Joseph B. Ford, was a professor of Sociology at California State University, Northridge and spoke German, Italian, French, Spanish, and Japanese and could read and write in Latin. Anabel Ford’s mother, actress Marjorie Henshaw, was also known by her stage name Anabel Shaw. Ford's interest in Mesoamerican prehistory—Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, Chichen Itza—led her to choose a research career around the jungles that enveloped Maya sites. In 1981, Ford received her PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara based on a settlement survey of the transect (La Brecha Anabel) she established between Tikal and Yaxha in the Peten of Guatemala. She began her research career as a research scientist at UCSB. In 1986 Ford became the director of the Mesoamerican Research Center.

Ford began her work in the Maya lowlands in 1972. In 1978 while working on her doctorate, Ford mapped a between the Maya cities of Tikal and Yaxhá in the Petén of northern Guatemala.

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