Jaime Awe

Jaime José Awe is a Belizean archaeologist who specializes in the ancient Maya, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University, and the Director of the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project.

Awe, the ninth-youngest of eleven children, was born and raised in San Ignacio, Cayo District, Belize (then British Honduras). His childhood home was within walking distance of Maya ruins, where, as a youth, he would amuse himself by digging up ancient Maya artifacts. Courses in Anthropology that he took while a student at St. John’s College in Belize City rekindled his curiosity about the human past and inspired him to pursue a career in archaeology. Due to the limited educational opportunities available to Belizeans at the time, however, he had no choice but to go abroad in order to continue his formal study of the subject. Before leaving his Central American homeland to further his education, he held the government post of Archaeological Assistant at the Department of Archaeology (then under the Ministry of Tourism and the Environment) and served as a field assistant in excavations at the Maya archaeological sites of Cerros, Lamanai and the Sayab Mai Cenote.

Awe majored in Anthropology at Trent University in Canada, where he was mentored by Paul Healy and received his B.A. and M.A. in 1981 and 1985, respectively. He began his doctoral studies at the State University of New York at Albany, but later transferred to the University of London, where he became the first Belizean to ever receive a Ph.D. in Archaeology in 1992. Since earning his doctorate, Awe has held faculty positions at Trent University, the University of New Hampshire, Galen University (in Belize) and Northern Arizona University, where he is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology.

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