Joyce Marcus is a Latin American archaeologist and professor in the Department of Anthropology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also holds the position of Curator of Latin American Archaeology, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology.[1] Marcus has published extensively in the field of Latin American archaeological research. Her focus has been primarily on the Zapotec, Maya, and coastal Andean civilizations of Central and South America.[2][3] Much of her fieldwork has been concentrated in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. She is known for her "Dynamic model", four-tiered hierarchy, and her use of interdisciplinary study.[1][4]
Joyce Marcus was born in California. She credits receiving a copy of An Introduction to the Study of the Maya HieroglyphsbyS.G. Morley from Dr. Robert F. Heizer in 1969 after a field season in Lovelock, Nevada with influencing her to get into the field of hieroglyphics.[5]
She received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1969, and went on to receive her M.A. in 1971 and her Ph.D in 1974, both from Harvard University.[2] She did her dissertation under her mentor, Tatiana Proskouriakoff, and Gordon R. Willey, Jeremy A. Sabloff, and Evon Z. Vogt.[5] Her book, Emblem and State in the Classic Maya Lowlands: An Epigraphic Approach to Territorial Organization, is the published version of her dissertation.[6]
Marcus has spent her entire teaching career at the University of Michigan, from 1973 to the present, though she has been invited to guest lecture all over the world.[2] She became a curator for Latin American Archaeology for the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology in 1978.[2] She has also consulted for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania, the Cotson Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.[2]
In 1997, Marcus was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2005, she became the first archaeologist elected to the council.[2] In 2005, the University of Michigan awarded her the Robert L. Carneiro Distinguished University Professor of Social Evolution.[1] Marcus is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and Institute of Andean Studies.[2] She is a member of the American Anthropological Association, the Society for American Archaeology, the American Society for Ethnohistory, the Midwest Andeanist Society, and the Midwest Mesoamerican Society.[2]
She has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Bowditch Fund at Harvard University, Dumbarton Oaks, the American Association for University Women, the National Science Foundation, and the University of Michigan.[2][7]
William J. Folan invited her to record the Maya monuments at Calakmul, Campech and surrounding areas in 1983-1984.[7] She has done research at Dumbarton Oaks Center for Pre-Columbian Studies in Washington, DC.[8] Marcus often works and publishes with her husband Kent V. Flannery.[4] Marcus and Flannery directed the Valley of Oaxaca Human Ecology Project with the University of Michigan, a long-term project designed by Flannery.[9]