MAPSA delivers dual-tiered, editable academic modules — with faculty answer keys and student research worksheets — directly inside your LMS. Built on primary source data from Monte Albán, Oaxaca. Fully ADA compliant.
Request Institutional Access →Monte Albán is a 2,500-year-old Zapotec capital and one of the most significant pre-Columbian sites in the Americas. It belongs in every Mesoamerican studies curriculum.
Yet there is no dedicated, structured teaching resource for it. Faculty assemble course packets from scattered journal articles, out-of-print monographs, and secondhand summaries that recycle the same surface-level content. There are no ready-made modules. No answer keys. No worksheets grounded in primary data.
And for institutions under Section 504/508 obligations, the situation is worse — most available materials lack transcripts, screen-reader compatibility, or any accessibility verification at all.
The Monte Albán Professional Source Archive is not a textbook supplement or a media library. It is a dual-tiered academic platform — with editable modules for faculty and students — built on primary archaeological data and maintained on the ground in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Faculty receive answer keys, grading frameworks, and structural analysis guides. Students receive guided research worksheets that walk them through real archaeological evidence. Both tiers are delivered directly inside your LMS through a single, secure connection.
Restricted to users with the Educator role. When an instructor launches MAPSA from their LMS, they see the full research layer — everything a student sees, plus the materials needed to teach and grade effectively.
Accessible to users with the Student role. These aren't passive reading assignments. They are structured, analytical worksheets that guide students through primary archaeological data and ask them to build evidence-based arguments.
Role assignment is automatic. The LTI 1.3 Bridge reads the user's role from your LMS and gates access instantly — no manual configuration required.
MAPSA was not retrofitted for accessibility. Every component of the platform — from audio assets to the Wiki-Archive — was built with US institutional compliance requirements as a foundational design constraint, not an afterthought.
Every audio and video asset in the archive includes a meticulously verified, word-for-word text transcript. These are not auto-generated captions — they are reviewed by human editors for accuracy. Students and faculty rely on these transcripts as primary evidence sources within the academic modules.
Expert-led narrative audio descriptions of site features, architectural significance, and historical context. Designed both as an accessibility pathway and as a standalone learning tool for auditory learners and field-study preparation.
The platform's documentation and Wiki-Archive are structured with semantic HTML, ARIA labels, and logical heading hierarchies for full compatibility with assistive technologies — ensuring an equitable research environment for all users.
The central, searchable database of Zapotec history, site structures, and chronologies. Over 20 individually documented buildings with scholarly citations in English and Spanish. This is the primary landing zone upon a successful LTI launch.
A growing library of high-resolution photographs taken on-site in Oaxaca — not licensed stock imagery. Every image in the modules is original, with verifiable provenance.
Custom site plans and interpretive maps showing spatial relationships between structures, tombs, plazas, and sightlines. Designed for classroom projection and student reference.
All core archive content maintained in parallel English and Spanish — essential for Latin American Studies departments, bilingual programs, and international research teams.
Submit a brief partnership request. We respond within 48 hours with a tailored onboarding plan based on your LMS and program needs.
Our team registers your platform credentials and configures the LTI 1.3 Advantage handshake — the same standard used by major educational publishers to connect securely with your LMS.
Faculty add the MAPSA tool to any course. Students click and land inside the archive with the correct role and access level. No accounts to create. Nothing to manage on your end.
You evaluate digital resources by authority, accessibility, and integration standards. MAPSA meets all three.
Content is primary-sourced, editorially maintained from Oaxaca, and structured for long-term reference. Human-verified transcripts and screen-reader optimization mean it passes your accessibility review. Integration runs on LTI 1.3 — the same standard your LMS team already supports.
You need materials that work across course levels — from introductory surveys to graduate seminars — without building everything from scratch.
MAPSA gives you editable answer keys, grading frameworks, and student worksheets grounded in real archaeological data. The bilingual format supports comparative coursework. The dual-tier system means your students see worksheets while you see the full research layer with expected evidence and key concepts.
MAPSA is lightweight to adopt and visible in impact. No infrastructure to build, no software to install, no ongoing IT burden beyond standard LMS tool provisioning.
The platform is built to WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standards — it's designed to support your campus compliance obligations, not create new ones. A partnership with the Monte Albán Heritage Center gives your institution a direct connection to on-the-ground research in one of the world's most important heritage regions.
We work with a limited number of institutional partners each semester to ensure onboarding quality and archive integrity. If your department, library, or campus is exploring digital resources for Mesoamerican studies, we'd welcome the conversation.
Prefer email? Reach us directly at partnerships@montealbanoaxaca.com
The Monte Albán Heritage Center (MAHC) operates montealbanoaxaca.com, an independent digital research and education platform focused on the archaeological heritage of the Valley of Oaxaca. MAPSA is MAHC's institutional access program. All archive content is editorially independent and not affiliated with INAH or any government agency. Licensing and invoicing for institutional partners is administered through a US-based LLC.
