1st Edition
3,000 Years of War and Peace in the Maya Lowlands Identity, Politics, and Violence
3,000 Years of War and Peace in the Maya Lowlands presents the cutting-edge research of 25 authors in the fields of archaeology, biological anthropology, art history, ethnohistory, and epigraphy. Together, they explore issues central to ancient Maya identity, political history, and warfare.
The Maya lowlands of Guatemala, Belize, and southeast Mexico have witnessed human occupation for at least 11,000 years, and settled life reliant on agriculture began some 3,100 years ago. From the earliest times, Maya communities expressed their shifting identities through pottery, architecture, stone tools, and other items of material culture. Although it is tempting to think of the Maya as a single unified culture, they were anything but homogeneous, and differences in identity could be expressed through violence. 3,000 Years of War and Peace in the Maya Lowlands explores the formation of identity, its relationship to politics, and its manifestation in warfare from the earliest pottery-making villages through the late colonial period by studying the material remains and written texts of the Maya.
This volume is an invaluable reference for students and scholars of the ancient Maya, including archaeologists, art historians, and anthropologists.
1. Identity, Politics, & Violence: An Introduction to 3,000 Years of War and Peace in the Maya Lowlands
Geoffrey E. Braswell
2. Identity and power of the earliest Maya: Preclassic architecture and cultural development of Nakum and Yaxha, Peten, Guatemala
Bernard Hermes and Jarosław Źrałka
3. Migration and Conflict, or Emulation and Interaction? The Belize Valley during the Middle Preclassic
Nancy Peniche May, Jaime J. Awe, and Claire E. Ebert
4. Southern Belize from Paleoindian to Preclassic Times: Introduction to the Region, Early Origins, and Identity
Geoffrey E. Braswell
5. The Southern Belize Region in Early to Late Classic Period Mesoamerica: First Settlement,
Nim li Punit, and Uxbenka
Geoffrey E. Braswell
6. The Southern Belize Region in Late to Terminal Classic Period Mesoamerica: Pusilha,
Lubaantun, and Identity
Geoffrey E. Braswell
7. Queens and Statecraft: Royal Women in the Heart of the Fire Shrine at El Perú-Waka’
Olivia C. Navarro-Farr, Damien Marken, Mary Kate Kelly, Keith Eppich, Griselda Pérez Robles, and Juan Carlos Pérez
8. Architecture as a Material Representation of Sociopolitical Structure: An Analysis of Lowland
Maya Palace Complexes in the Late Eighth Century
Tomás Barrientos Q.
9. As the B’ak’tun Turned: Reconstructing Classic to Postclassic Population Dynamics in the
Belize River Valley
Julie A. Hoggarth, Carolyn Freiwald, Claire E. Ebert, Christophe Helmke, Jaime J. Awe , Kirsten Green Mink, Patricia Powless, and Ashley H. McKeown
10. Dzehkabtun: Crisis and Violence in the Terminal Classic
Iken Paap
11. Foreign Encounters: Warfare, Trade, and Status at Chichen Itza
Annabeth Headrick and John W. Hoopes
12. The Sustenance Providers: War, Sacrifice, and the Origin of People in Ancient Mesoamerica
Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos
13. Power and Politics on the Late Colonial Frontier of British Honduras
Brooke Bonorden and Brett A. Houk
Biography
Geoffrey E. Braswell is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. Among his numerous works are The Maya and Teotihuacan, The Ancient Maya of Mexico, and The Maya and Their Central American Neighbors.
