Diane Zaino Chase (born 1953) is an American anthropologist and archaeologist who specializes in the study of the Ancient Maya.
She completed her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in 1982 with a dissertation on "Spatial and Temporal Variability in Postclassical Northern Belize".
[4] According to the office of the provost, "the Pegasus Professor Award recognizes a faculty member who has made a significant impact on the university and will have demonstrated excellence in teaching, research, and service.
[7] In 2016, Chase was appointed executive vice president and provost at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV).
In 2019 Chase joined Claremont Graduate University as its vice president for academic innovation, student success, and strategic initiatives.
Their fieldwork conducted at Caracol over the past 30 years has resulted in significant contributions to the ongoing research into the Ancient Maya.
In 2007, Chase and her husband, along with biologist John Weishampel, received a grant from NASA to conduct a canopy penetrating radar called LiDAR.
[15] In that same year she also spearheaded the article “Mesoamerican Urbanism Revisited: Environmental Change, Adaptation, Resilience, Persistence, and Collapse” that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
All three children have accompanied their parents to the archaeological site of Caracol in Belize, where they have been conducting excavations for over thirty years.