Duncan Pring was educated at Oxford (BA, MA) and London (MA, Ph.D) universities, and his PhD thesis was on “The Preclassic Ceramics of Northern Belize”. Having worked as an archaeologist before moving into teaching, he was involved in a number of significant digs in the region, and his book `The Protoclassic in Maya Lowlands` is a detailed analysis of the archaeological and ceramic evidence for the transitional period between the Preclassic and Classic ages.

The Maya lived in Central America between 1000 B.C. and 1528 at which time they were conquered by the Spaniards. The peak of their civilization was between 300 and 900 AD. During that time, they built enormous monuments, produced jade and ceramic items of great beauty and developed a calendar that was far more advanced than anything in Europe at the time. They had an advanced understanding of mathematics and astronomy and developed a hieroglyphic script which scholars are beginning to decipher, allowing us to understand their achievements much more fully.