Joel Palka's research and teaching involve the archaeology and history of Mesoamerica and the Carribean, Classic Maya culture, Maya hieroglyphic writing and art, cultural evolution, social inequality, and ancient settlement patterns. His undergraduate and graduate research focused on ancient Maya social differentiation, settlement archaeology, Maya architecture, and the collapse of Maya civilization. Palka's current research involves a new historical archaeology project that examines Lacandon Maya culture change in Guatemala and Chiapas during the 19th century, which will soon be published as a book. He is also faculty advisor for the Chicago Maya Society where he advocates an anthropological perspective for studying information from Classic Maya hieroglyphs. Palka is a member of the American Anthropological Association, Society for American Archaeology, Sigma Xi, and an adjunct curator in Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago.
Unconquered Lacandon Maya: Ethnohistory and Archaeology of Indigenous Culture Change. Maya Studies Series, University Press of Florida, 2005.
"Monument to a Matriarch: A Classic Maya Stela at the Art Institute of Chicago"
(with Jeff Buechler). Mesoamerican Voices 1:41-64, 2003.
This Historica Dictionary of Ancient Mesoamerica. Scarecrow Press, 2000.
"Classic Maya Parentage and Social Structure with Insights on Ancient Gender Ideology." In Gender and Archaeology, edited by Nancy Wicker and Bettina Arnold, BAR International Series, Oxford, 1999.
"Lacandon Maya Culture Change and Survival in Frontier of expanding Guatemalan and Mexican States." In Studies in Culture Contact, edited by James Cusick, Southern Illinois University, 1998.
"Seeing Aztec History and Culture." Visual Anthropology, 11:243-248, 1998.
"Reconstructing Maya Social Inequality and the Collapse at Dos Pilas, Peten, Guatemala." Ancient Mesoamerica, 8(2):293-306, 1997.
"Sociopolitical Implications of a New Emblem Glyph and Place Name in Classic Maya Inscriptions." Latin American Antiquity, 7(3):211-227, 1996.
"Classic Maya Social Inequality and the Collapse at Dos Pilas, Peten, Guatemala. Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1995 (for Vanderbilt University Press, in preparation).
Temple II, Tikal, Guatemala (Classic Maya).
