David M. Pendergast

David Michael Pendergast (born 1934) is an American Archaeologist, and is most famous for his work at Altun Ha and Lamanai, Belize. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology in 1955 from the University of California, Berkeley, and earned his Ph.D. in 1961 at the University of California, Los Angeles, studying with Clement Meighan. He was later married to Elizabeth Graham, also a Mesoamerican Archaeologist.

While pursuing his doctorate at UCLA, Pendergast became the Museum Curator in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah, where he later became Assistant Professor of Anthropology. In 1957, he conducted reconnaissance work and excavations at Tikal, Guatemala, and in the following years supervised and excavated several sites throughout California, Mexico, Arizona, Utah, as well as Belize and later Cuba.

He began excavations as field director of the Royal Ontario Museum’s Altun Ha Expedition in British Honduras in 1964. Excavations commenced at Altun Ha after reconnaissance and test excavations were conducted by Pendergast in 1963, and excavation continued through 1971. In his excavations of Structure B4 he discovered several tombs, one of which was famously called the Sun God’s Tomb which yielded the Kinich Ahaw Jade Head which is the single largest piece of carved jade in Mesoamerica and a national symbol of Belize.

Pendergast served as the acting Archaeological Commissioner of Belize in 1967. The following year (1968) he became the Associate Curator of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), and in 1977, he became the Curator of the Department of New World Archaeology at ROM.

Between 1974 and 1986, Pendergast directed the archaeological research projects at Lamanai, Belize, constructing the site’s chronology. The site’s core was fully mapped in the first two field seasons. Preliminary excavations revealed the presence of a raised-field system immediately north of the site’s core, and excavations of Group N revealed much of the site’s early history Pendergast's excavations demonstrated continuous occupation at the site from the Middle Preclassic (900-400 B.C.), until A.D. 1675.Elizabeth Graham now runs the Lamanai Archaeological Project.

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