Richard E. Terry is Professor Emeritus of Soil Science at Brigham Young University. Dr. Terry received a Bachelor of Science in Agronomy from Brigham Young University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Soil Biology and Biochemistry from Purdue University. Dr. Terry’s research in soil resources of the ancient Mesoamericans in southern Mexico and Central America began in 1997 when he was invited by BYU archaeologist Stephen Houston and geographer Perry Hardin to assist in setting up a field laboratory and analytic procedures for the measurement of soil phosphorus that resulted from ancient Maya activities related to food preparation, consumption, and waste disposal at the ancient city of Piedras Negras, Guatemala.
In the subsequent 20 years, his soil research in Mesoamerica expanded beyond extractable phosphorus, plant nutrients, and heavy metals to include stable carbon isotope analyses to help identify ancient corn fields. During that time, he published over 55 scientific journal articles about the soil resources of ancient Mesoamerica.
Robert C. Roylance is a retired Agricultural Economist and farm manager with Farm Management Company, the agricultural investment arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He received a B.S. in Agricultural Economics from Brigham Young University. During his career, he managed around 300 commercial farms. Most of them were leased to local farmers, however, he directly managed several large, irrigated farms in the Pacific Northwest. Robert has traveled to many of the ancient archaeological sites in Mesoamerica and has taken an interest in the relationship of those sites to the geography of the Book of Mormon
