Jennifer Mathews is a Professor of Anthropology, Department Chair (Sociology and Anthropology), and is serving in her 21st year at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She teaches undergraduate courses in Archaeology and Biological Anthropology, including Introduction to Prehistoric Archaeology, Pre-Columbian Art of Mesoamerica, Seminar on the Ancient Maya, Human Evolution, Primatology, Anthropological Forensics, Anthropological Ethics, Eating and Drinking in the 19th Century, and First Year Experience: Inventing Mexico. She was named the 2019-20 recipient of the Dr. and Mrs. Z.T. Scott Faculty Fellowship (Trinity University’s highest academic award) in recognition of her outstanding abilities as a teacher and mentor and was selected as a Piper Professor (a state-wide teaching award for superior teaching at the college level) for 2020.

 

Her undergraduate degree was in anthropology from San Diego State University, and she received her Master's and Ph.D. in anthropology, with a specialization in Maya archaeology, from the University of California at Riverside. She has been conducting fieldwork and archival research in southern Mexico since 1993, where she specialized in ancient Maya road systems and architecture of the Late Formative period. More recently, she has been studying issues of sustainability and tourism in the Yucatán Peninsula of México, and historical Maya archaeology, researching food commodities like sugarcane and rum, and chicle (the base for chewing gum).

 

She has written numerous journal articles, book chapters and five books. Three are edited volumes on Maya archaeology: Quintana Roo Archaeology (with Justine Shaw), Lifeways in the Northern Maya Lowlands: New Approaches to Archaeology in the Yucatán Peninsula (with Bethany Morrison) and The Value of Things: Prehistoric to Contemporary Commodities in the Maya Region (with Tom Guderjan). She also published the monographs Chicle: Chewing Gum of the Americas: From the Ancient Maya to William Wrigley (with Gillian P. Schultz) in 2009 and the 2020 volume (with John Gust) Sugarcane and Rum: The Bittersweet History of Labor and Life on the Yucatán Peninsula.  She also works regularly as a consultant for local museums such as the Witte Museum and San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA), developing educational curriculum, training docents, and providing feedback on exhibition development. She is currently collaborating with Dr. Lucia Abramovich, Curator of Latin American Art at SAMA on a revised catalogue and reinstallation of the ancient Pre-Columbian collection.