Unlocking the Mayan mystery

PROVO — When he's not lecturing and writing within ivy-covered buildings in the button-down world of academia, Stephen Houston spends weeks and months at a time far from home, playing in the dirt.

Of course, as an internationally renowned scholar, exploring ancient civilizations in remote, primitive areas of Mesoamerica is all part of his job.

"It's an unusual life I live," says Houston, who has taught at Brigham Young University the past 10 years and whose groundbreaking research on the mysterious Mayan culture has garnered him international acclaim.

"A lot of things I do are out of most people's experience. It's hard to communicate what it's like being an archaeologist to others. They have no idea of the moments of joy and terror that we experience."

Those experiences during his many trips to Mesoamerica sound like they're out of a script of an Indiana Jones movie.

"Uncovering a hieroglyphic inscription that no human being has looked at in 1,500 years, then being able to read what they're saying almost instantly, to me is pure joy," Houston says. "So is opening a royal tomb and seeing a place that must have been enveloped by emotion and religious beliefs over 1,000 years ago."

As for the terror, he enumerates a host of physical dangers.

"I've had a lot of close brushes with lethally toxic vipers. I've had to negotiate with guerrillas and left-wing insurgents in Guatemala," he says. "More recently, there have been a lot of problems with bandits in Piedras Negras. Over the years, I've had workers kidnapped by guerillas. I've had pits almost collapse on me. In a certain part of your brain, there's a certain acceptance that you could die tomorrow. I'm probably so stupid, or I've compartmentalized things so well, that it doesn't stop me."

The adventuresome Houston (pronounced HOUSE-ton) has embarked on a different type of adventure. He's changed his address from Happy Valley to the Ivy League, having accepted a position in the anthropology department at Brown University in Providence, R.I., where he'll begin teaching in the fall.

He and his wife, Nancy, have already moved.

Houston knows the move from BYU to Brown will be brusque, to say the least.

"I'm going from the most conservative campus in the United States to the most liberal," he says with a chuckle. "In fact, I think Brown is where they coined the phrase 'politically correct.' I'm expecting a very different kind of teaching experience. I suspect it will have its comical aspects as I flounder about there."

In truth, Houston owns a solid track record when it comes to adapting.