Maya Studies – serie

In ancient Maya cities, “E Groups” are sets of buildings aligned with the movements of the sun. This volume presents new archaeological data to reveal that E Groups were constructed earlier than previously thought—in fact, they are the earliest identifiable architectural plan at many Maya settlements. More than just astronomical observatories or calendars, E Groups were gathering places for emerging communities and centers of ritual: the very first civic-religious public architecture in the Maya lowlands. Investigating a wide variety of E Group sites in different contexts, this volume pieces together the development of social and political complexity in the ancient Maya civilization.A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase.

Pathways to Complexity synthesizes a wealth of new archaeological data to illuminate the origins of Maya civilization and the rise of Classic Maya culture. In this volume, prominent Maya scholars argue that the development of social, religious, and economic complexity began during the Middle Preclassic period (1000-300 BC), hundreds of years earlier than previously thought.Contributors reveal that villages were present in parts of the lowlands by 1000 BC. Combining recent discoveries from the northern lowlands--an area often neglected in other volumes-and the southern lowlands, the collection then traces the emergence of sociopolitical inequality and complexity in all parts of the Yucatán Peninsula over the course of the Middle Preclassic period. They show that communities evolved in different ways due to influences such as geographical location, ceramic exchange, shell ornament production, agricultural strategy, religious ritual, ideology, and social rankings. These varied pathways to complexity developed over half a millennium and culminated in the institution of kingship by the Late Preclassic period.Presenting exciting work on a dynamic and misunderstood time period, Pathways to Complexity demonstrates the importance of a broad, comparative approach to understanding Preclassic Maya civilization and will serve as a foundation for future research and interpretation.

In Maya Salt Works, Heather McKillop details her archaeological team’s groundbreaking discovery of a unique and massive salt production complex submerged in a lagoon in southern Belize. Exploring the organization of production and trade at the Paynes Creek Salt Works, McKillop offers a fascinating new look at the role of salt in the ancient Maya economy. McKillop maps over 4,042 wooden posts and wedges, the first known wooden structures preserved underwater from the Classic period, describing new methods of underwater archaeology developed specifically for this shallow maritime setting. She explains the technology of salt production, examining fragments of briquetage?the pots that boiled brine over fires in the kitchens. McKillop theorizes that different households operated different salt kitchens and distributed their goods via canoe to sell at marketplaces at nearby inland cities. By evaluating the scale, concentration, intensity, and context of the Paynes Creek Salt Works, McKillop provides a model for interpreting existing salt works sites as well as future discoveries along the Yucatan Peninsula. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase.

Pre-Columbian artifacts are among the most popular items on the international antiquities market, yet it is becoming increasingly difficult to monitor these items as public, private, and digital sales proliferate. This timely volume explores past, current, and future policies and trends concerning the sales and illicit movement of artifacts from Mesoamerica to museums and private collections.Informed by the fields of anthropology, economics, law, and criminology, contributors critically analyze practices of research and collecting in Central American countries. They assess the circulation of looted and forged artifacts on the art market and in museums and examine government and institutional policies aimed at fighting trafficking. They also ask if and how scholars can use materials removed from their context to interpret the past. The theft of cultural heritage items from their places of origin is a topic of intense contemporary discussion, and The Market for Mesoamerica updates our knowledge of this issue by presenting undocumented and illicit antiquities within a regional and global context. Through discussion of transparency, accountability, and ethical practice, this volume ultimately considers how antiquities can be protected and studied through effective policy and professional practice.

Drawing on archaeological findings from the Maya lowlands, War Owl Falling shows how innovation and creativity led to social change in ancient societies. Markus Eberl discusses the ways eighth-century Maya (and Maya commoners in particular) reinvented objects and signs that were associated with nobility, including scepters, ceramic vessels, ballgame equipment, and the symbol of the owl. These inventions, he argues, reflect assertions of independence and a redistribution of power that contributed to the Maya collapse in the Late Classic period. Eberl emphasizes that individual decision-making – the ability to imagine alternate worlds and to act on that vision – plays a large role in changing social structure over time. Pinpointing where and when these Maya inventions emerged, how individuals adopted them and why, War Owl Falling connects technological and social change in a novel way.

This exciting book brings the often-overlooked southern Maya region of Guatemala into the spotlight by closely examining the ""lost city"" of Chocola. Jonathan Kaplan and Federico Paredes Umana prove that Chocola was a major Maya polity and reveal exactly why it was so influential.In their fieldwork at the site, Kaplan and Paredes Umana discovered an extraordinarily sophisticated underground water-control system. They also discovered cacao residues in ceramic vessels. Based on these and other findings, the authors believe that cacao was consumed and grown intensively at Chocola and that the city was the center of a large cacao trade. They contend that the city’s wealth and power were built on its abundant supply of water and its command of cacao, which was significant not just to cuisine and trade but also to Maya ideology and cosmology. Moreover, Kaplan and Paredes Umana detail the ancient city's ceramics and add over thirty stone sculptures to the site's inventory.Because the southern Maya region was likely the origin of Maya hieroglyphic writing and the Long Count calendar, scholars have long suspected the area to be important. This pioneering field research at Chocola helps explain how and why the region played a leading role in the rise of the Maya civilization.

The study of politics, a dominating force throughout history, can provide great insight into the lives of ancient people. Because of the richness and complexity of Maya society, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent decades attempting to reconstruct its political systems. In Ancient Maya Political Dynamics, Antonia Foias argues that there is no single Maya political history but multiple histories, no single Maya state but multiple polities that need to be understood at the level of the lived, individual experience. She explores the ways in which the dynamics of political power shaped the lives and landscape of the Maya and how this information can be used to look at other complex societies.

The ancient Maya produced a broad range of ceramics that has attracted concerted scholarly attention for over a century. Pottery shards--the most abundant artifacts recovered from sites--reveal much about artistic expression, religious ritual, economic systems, cooking traditions, and cultural exchange in Maya society.Today, nearly every Maya archaeologist uses the type-variety classificatory framework for studying sherd collections. This impressive volume brings together many of the archaeologists signally involved in the analysis and interpretation of ancient Maya ceramics and represents new findings and state-of-the-art thinking. The result is a book that serves both as a valuable resource for archaeologists involved in pottery classification, analysis, and interpretation and as an illuminating exploration of ancient Mayan culture.

Scholars have long debated the nature of Maya political organization during the Classic period (AD 250-950). Complex questions regarding political centralization, economic change, and the role of politics and economics in the rise and collapse of the civilization have been examined and reexamined from a variety of perspectives. Antonia Foias and Kitty Emery have assembled a broad collection of essays all focused on a single polity, that of Motul de San José.

Maya kings who failed to ensure the prosperity of their kingdoms were subject to various forms of termination, including the ritual defacing and destruction of monuments and even violent death. This is the first comprehensive volume to focus on the variedresponses to the failure of Classic period dynasties in the southern lowlands. The contributors offer new insights into the Maya “collapse,” evaluating the trope of the scapegoat king and the demise of the traditional institution of kingship in the early ninthcentury AD—a time of intense environmental, economic, social, political, and even ideological change.

The ancient Maya invested prodigious amounts of labor in the construction of road systems for communication and trade, yet recent discoveries surrounding Chetumal Bay reveal an alternative and extensive network of riverine and maritime waterways.Focusing on sites ringing the bay such as Cerro Maya, Oxtankah, and Santa Rita Corozal, the contributors to this volume explore how the bay and its feeder rivers affected all aspects of Maya culture from settlement, food production, and the production and use of special goods to political relationships and social organization. Besides being a nexus for long distance exchange in valuable materials such as jade and obsidian, the region was recognized for its high quality agricultural produce, including chocolate, achiote, vanilla, local fruits, honey, and salt, and for its rich marine environment. The Maya living on the fringes of the bay perceived the entire region as a single resource procurement zone. Waterborne trade brought the world to them, providing a wider horizon than would have been available to inland cities dependent only on Maya roads for news of the world.

Maya kings who failed to ensure the prosperity of their kingdoms were subject to various forms of termination, including the ritual defacing and destruction of monuments and even violent death. This is the first comprehensive volume to focus on the varied responses to the failure of Classic period dynasties in the southern lowlands. The contributors offer new insights into the Maya ""collapse,"" evaluating the trope of the scapegoat king and the demise of the traditional institution of kingship in the early ninth century AD--a time of intense environmental, economic, social, political, and even ideological change.

As complex societies emerged in the Maya lowlands during the first millen¬nium BCE, so did stable communities focused around public squares and the worship of a divine ruler tied to a Maize God cult. "E Groups," central to many of these settle¬ments, are architectural complexes: typically, a long platform supporting three struc¬tures and facing a western pyramid across a formal plaza. Aligned with the movements of the sun, E Groups have long been interpreted as giant calendrical devices crucial to the rise of Maya civilization. This volume presents new archaeological data to reveal that E Groups were constructed earlier than previously thought. In fact, they are the earliest identifiable architectural plan at many Maya settlements. More than just astronomical observatories or calendars, E Groups were a key ele¬ment of community organization, urbanism, and identity in the heart of the Maya lowlands. They served as gathering places for emerging communities and centers of ritual; they were the very first civic-religious public architecture in the Maya lowlands. Investigating a wide variety of E Group sites—including some of the most famous like the Mundo Perdido in Tikal and the hitherto little known complex at Chan, as well as others in Ceibal, El Palmar, Cival, Calakmul, Caracol, Xunantunich, Yaxnohcah, Yaxuná, and San Bartolo—this volume pieces together the development of social and political complexity in ancient Maya civilization.

A timely synthesis of the latest research and perspectives on ancient Maya economics, this volume illuminates the sophistication and intricacy of economic systems in the Preclassic, Classic, and Postclassic periods. Contributors from a wide range of disciplines move beyond paradigms of elite control and centralized exchange to focus on individual agency, highlighting production and exchange that took place at all levels of society. Case studies draw on new archaeological evidence from rural households and urban marketplaces to reconstruct the trade networks for tools, ceramics, obsidian, salt, and agricultural goods throughout the empire. They also describe the ways household production integrated with community, regional, and interregional markets. Redirecting the field of ancient Maya economic studies away from simplistic characterizations of the past by fully representing the range of current views on the subject, this volume delves deeply into multiple facets of a complex, interdependent material world. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

Examining changes to the institution of divine kingship from 750 to 950 CE in the Maya lowland cities, Maya Kingship presents a new way of studying the collapse of that civilization and the transformation of political systems between the Terminal Classic and Postclassic Periods.Leading experts in Maya studies offer insights into the breakdown of kingship regimes, as well as the gradual urban collapse and settlement relocations that followed. The volume illuminates historical factors and actions that led to the end of the institution across kingdoms and the mechanisms that enabled societies to eventually recover with new political structures. Contributors provide archaeological, iconographic, epigraphic, and ethnohistorical perspectives, exploring datasets in the spheres of warfare, social dynamics, economics, and architecture.Unfolding with precision the chains of processes and events that occurred during the ninth and tenth centuries in the southern lowlands, and slightly later in the north, this volume displays an original and ambitious historical approach central to understanding one of the most radical political shifts to occur in the pre-Columbian Americas.

Based on her analysis of archaeological evidence from the excavations of Maya churches at Tipu and Lamanai, Elizabeth Graham seeks to understand why the Maya sometimes actively embraced Catholicism during the period of European conquest and continued to worship in this way even after the end of Spanish occupation.The Maya in Belize appear to have continued to bury their dead in Christian churchyards long after the churches themselves had fallen into disuse. They also seem to have hidden pre-Hispanic objects of worship in Christian sacred spaces during times of persecution, and excavations reveal the style of the early churches to be unmistakably Franciscan. The evidence suggests that the Maya remained Christian after 1700, when Spaniards were no longer in control, which challenges the widespread assumption that because Christianity was imposed by force it was never properly assimilated by indigenous peoples.Combining historical and archaeological data with her experience of having been raised as a Roman Catholic, Graham proposes a way of assessing the concept of religious experience and processes of conversion that takes into account the material, visual, sensual, and even olfactory manifestations of the sacred.

Pathways to Complexity synthesizes a wealth of new archaeological data to illuminate the origins of Maya civilization and the rise of Classic Maya culture. In this volume, prominent Maya scholars argue that the development of social, religious, and economic complexity began during the Middle Preclassic period (1000–300 B.C.), hundreds of years earlier than previously thought.Contributors reveal that villages were present in parts of the lowlands by 1000 B.C., challenging the prevailing models estimating when civilization took root in the area. Combining recent discoveries from the northern lowlands—an area often neglected in other volumes—and the southern lowlands, the collection then traces the emergence of sociopolitical inequality and complexity in all parts of the Yucatan peninsula over the course of the Middle Preclassic period. They show that communities evolved in different ways due to influences such as geographical location, ceramic exchange, shell ornament production, agricultural strategy, religious ritual, ideology, and social rankings. These varied pathways to complexity developed over half a millennium and culminated in the institution of kingship by the Late Preclassic period.Presenting exciting work on a dynamic and poorly understood time period, Pathways to Complexity demonstrates the importance of a broad, comparative approach to understanding Preclassic Maya civilization and will serve as a foundation for future research and interpretation. Contributors: M. Kathryn Brown | George Bey III | Tara Bond-Freeman | Fernando Robles Castellanos | Tomas Gallareta Negron | E. Wyllys Andrews V | Anthony Andrews | David S. Anderson | Lauren Sullivan | Jaime J. Awe | James F. Garber | Mary Jane Acuña | William Saturno | Bobbi Hohmann | Terry Powis | Paul Healy | Richard Hansen | Donald W. Forsyth | David Freidel | Barbara Arroyo | Richard E. W. Adams

From the ancient traditions of the Lacandón Maya comes an Indigenous model for a sustainable future.Having lived for centuries isolated within Mexico’s largest remaining tropical rainforest, the Indigenous Lacandón Maya now live at the nexus of two worlds—ancient and modern. While previous research has focused on documenting Lacandón oral traditions and religious practices in order to preserve them, this book tells the story of how Lacandón families have adapted to the contemporary world while applying their ancestral knowledge to create an ecologically sustainable future.Drawing on his 49 years of studying and learning from the Lacandón Maya, James Nations discusses how in the midst of external pressures such as technological changes, missionary influences, and logging ventures, Lacandón communities are building an economic system of agroforestry and ecotourism that produces income for their families while protecting biodiversity and cultural resources. Nations describes methods they use to plant and harvest without harming the forest, illustrating that despite drastic changes in lifestyle, respect for the environment continues to connect Lacandón families across generations. By helping with these tasks and inheriting the fables and myths that reinforce this worldview, Lacandón children continue to learn about the plants, animals, and spiritual deities that coexist in their land.Indigenous peoples such as the Lacandón Maya control one-third of the intact forest landscapes left on Earth, and Indigenous knowledge and practices are increasingly recognized as key elements in the survival of the planet’s biological diversity. The story of the Lacandón Maya serves as a model for Indigenous controlled environmental conservation, and it will inform anyone interested in supporting sustainable Indigenous futures.A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

New understandings of how Maya people expressed timekeeping in daily lifeThis book discusses the range of ways the ancient Maya people made time tangible through their architecture, arts, writing, beliefs, and practices. These chapters show how the Maya incorporated cyclicality and expanded dimensionality into the built environment, embedding notions of time in shared political and economic institutions, religious and philosophical traditions, and mythology.Beginning several millennia ago, the Maya observed and calculated the solar year cycle and scheduled collective activities that integrated cities, towns, and villages over great distances. Their timekeeping approaches evolved from commemorative ceremonial architectural complexes starting around 1000 BCE to the formal public inscription of calendar jubilees on stone monuments, the use of calendar almanacs, written prophetic and historical accounts, and the customs of modern priest shamans. Contributors to this volume discuss everyday examples of how the Maya kept time through these practices, including divining with snail shells, laying out center designs with creation stories and star patterns, singing those stories while drinking from vases depicting mythic history, and embedding symbolic temporal deposits within their buildings and living areas. This comprehensive volume includes analyses of groundbreaking recent discoveries, such as the early center of Aguada Fénix and the connections it shows between Maya and Olmec timekeeping. By sharing how the Maya crafted a cosmological sense of time into their daily lives, The Materialization of Time in the Ancient Maya World addresses and rethinks the most famous intellectual feature of this civilization.A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

Recent research and discoveries at a prominent Maya rainforest cityThis volume presents the most current research on the ancient Maya city El Perú-Waka’, or “Kingdom of the Centipede.” Located in the Laguna del Tigre National Park of Guatemala, this city has been a major focus of recent archaeological inquiry, which has uncovered a long occupation at the site spanning from 300 BC to 1000 CE. The chapters in El Perú-Waka’ examine the Maya who lived here and the rainforest city they built, complete with its pyramids, palaces, temples, roads, reservoirs, and residences. Contributors reconstruct urban settlement patterns, look at health and dietary differences between elites and commoners, and analyze epigraphs and art, among other topics. The book includes a detailed discussion of the tomb of the city’s famous queen, Lady K’abel, showing that the queen’s choice to be interred within Waka’s most prominent dynastic monument demonstrates the power of Maya royal women to not only direct political discourse during their lives but also impact the reigns of their successors.The evidence in this volume indicates the city’s importance in the political and ritual landscape of the Maya Lowlands, and with the site’s long record of habitation and dense population, this book offers researchers an unmatched view of ancient life in a tropical urban environment.A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

From the ancient traditions of the Lacandón Maya comes an Indigenous model for a sustainable future.Having lived for centuries isolated within Mexico’s largest remaining tropical rainforest, the Indigenous Lacandón Maya now live at the nexus of two worlds—ancient and modern. While previous research has focused on documenting Lacandón oral traditions and religious practices in order to preserve them, this book tells the story of how Lacandón families have adapted to the contemporary world while applying their ancestral knowledge to create an ecologically sustainable future.Drawing on his 49 years of studying and learning from the Lacandón Maya, James Nations discusses how in the midst of external pressures such as technological changes, missionary influences, and logging ventures, Lacandón communities are building an economic system of agroforestry and ecotourism that produces income for their families while protecting biodiversity and cultural resources. Nations describes methods they use to plant and harvest without harming the forest, illustrating that despite drastic changes in lifestyle, respect for the environment continues to connect Lacandón families across generations. By helping with these tasks and inheriting the fables and myths that reinforce this worldview, Lacandón children continue to learn about the plants, animals, and spiritual deities that coexist in their land.Indigenous peoples such as the Lacandón Maya control one-third of the intact forest landscapes left on Earth, and Indigenous knowledge and practices are increasingly recognized as key elements in the survival of the planet’s biological diversity. The story of the Lacandón Maya serves as a model for Indigenous controlled environmental conservation, and it will inform anyone interested in supporting sustainable Indigenous futures.A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

Pre-Columbian artifacts are among the most popular items on the international antiquities market, yet it is becoming increasingly difficult to monitor these items as public, private, and digital sales proliferate. This timely volume explores past, current, and future policies and trends concerning the sales and illicit movement of artifacts from Mesoamerica to museums and private collections. Informed by the fields of anthropology, economics, law, and criminology, contributors critically analyze practices of research and collecting in Central American countries. They assess the circulation of looted and forged artifacts on the art market and in museums and examine government and institutional policies aimed at fighting trafficking. They also ask if and how scholars can use materials removed from their context to interpret the past.The theft of cultural heritage items from their places of origin is a topic of intense contemporary discussion, and The Market for Mesoamerica updates our knowledge of this issue by presenting undocumented and illicit antiquities within a regional and global context. Through discussion of transparency, accountability, and ethical practice, this volume ultimately considers how antiquities can be protected and studied through effective policy and professional practice.Contributors: Cara G. Tremain | Donna Yates | Martin Berger | Allison Davis | James Doyle | Rosemary Joyce | Nancy L. Kelker | Guido Krempel | Christina Luke | Sofia Paredes Maury | Adam Sellen

Reconstructing the history of a highland Maya capitalConquered by the Spanish in 1524, Iximché was the capital of the Cakchiquel Maya in Highland Guatemala. It is known to Mesoamerican archaeologists through the work of George Guillemin, who excavated the ceremonial center of Iximché from the late 1950s through the early 1970s but produced only summary articles on the site. This book reconstructs the history of Iximché based on analyses of ceramics and human skeletal remains, on Guillemin’s original excavation notes, drawings and photographs, and on the ethnohistorical literature. It contains the first detailed ceramic analysis for a Late Postclassic Cakchiquel site, and the ethnohistorical sketch is the first English-language synthesis of regional Cakchiquel history. It is also the first book in 50 years to include a comprehensive analysis of Highland Maya skeletons.