Alexander Geurds

Alexander Geurds is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in the prehispanic past of Central America and Mexico. Geurds serves as vice-dean and professor at the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University and has held academic positions in the United States at the Department of Anthropology at UC-Boulder and in the United Kingdom at the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, where he was a senior research fellow at Wolfson College. He is a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society, a National Geographic Society Explorer, and an elected fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Geurds has extensive experience in archaeological field research, museum collections, and historical archives across Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru. As director of the Proyecto Arqueológico Centro de Nicaragua (PACEN), he has led archaeological research in the Río Mayales subbasin in the Chontales province of central Nicaragua. His work in Nicaragua, supported by National Geographic grants, resulted in the documentation of Aguas Buenas, the largest prehispanic site on record in the region, notable for its unique architecture of hundreds of low mounds arranged in wide concentric circles near the Amerrisque foothills. Geurds also served as principal investigator on a project contextualizing monumental stone sculpture in central Nicaragua, which was featured in National Geographic en Español magazine and led to the discovery and recording of the El Gavilán site.

His research integrates archaeology, history, soil science, and ethnography, generating new data on underexplored archaeological regions and advancing the understanding of symbolic human-environmental interaction. Geurds focuses on the archaeology of Middle and South America, with research interests in stone sculpture practices, monumental architecture, mound building, and interregional networks of contact. He has also served as senior researcher on an interdisciplinary project investigating linguistic and archaeological evidence of long-distance contact between the central Andes and Mesoamerica, funded by an ERC-Advanced Grant.

Geurds received an NWO Vici grant for research on human-environmental engagement across Central America and Colombia and is a life member of the Society of Antiquaries. He is the founding editor of the book series "The Early Americas: History and Culture" at Brill Publishers. His publications include "Grounding the Past: The Praxis of Participatory Archaeology in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico," and he has co-edited volumes such as the "Handbook on Globalization in Archaeology" with Routledge and a forthcoming work on the archaeology of Nicaragua with University Press of Colorado. Geurds has also served as academic director of ARCHON, the Dutch Research School for Archaeology.

Geurds' research is coupled with public engagement through research impact studies aimed at promoting social resilience and cultural awareness in economically challenged regions of Nicaragua and supporting the development of archaeological expertise across Central America. By studying Mesoamerica, southern Central America, and parts of Colombia within one professorship, Geurds contributes to a more integrated approach in the field of American archaeology.