The Maya World brings together over 60 authors, representing the fields of archaeology, art history, epigraphy, geography, and ethnography, who explore cutting-edge research on every major facet of the ancient Maya and all sub-regions within the Maya world.
The Maya world, which covers Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador, contains over a hundred ancient sites that are open to tourism, eight of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and many thousands more that have been dug or await investigation. In addition to captivating the lay public, the ancient Maya have attracted scores of major interdisciplinary research expeditions and hundreds of smaller projects going back to the 19th century, making them one of the best-known ancient cultures. The Maya World explores their renowned writing system, towering stone pyramids, exquisitely painted murals, and elaborate funerary tombs as well as their creative agricultural strategies, complex social, economic, and political relationships, widespread interactions with other societies, and remarkable cultural resilience in the face of historical ruptures.
This is an invaluable reference volume for scholars of the ancient Maya, including archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists.
Chapter 1: Introduction, Traci Ardren and Scott R. Hutson
Part I: Beginnings
Introduction to Beginnings
Chapter 2: Archaic Maya Matters, Jon C. Lohse
Chapter 3: Public Architecture and the Rise of Complexity in the Middle Preclassic, M. Kathryn Brown and Travis W. Stanton
Chapter 4: The Southern Maya Lowlands in the Late Preclassic, James Doyle
Chapter 5: The Late Preclassic Pacific Slope, Julia Guernsey and Michael Love
Chapter 6: The Maya Highlands and the Late Preclassic: Kaminaljuyu as a Case Study, Barbara Arroyo
Part II: Bodies
Introduction to Bodies
Chapter 7: Maya Bioarchaeology, Vera Tiesler
Chapter 8: Graves, Dead Bodies, Souls, and Ancestors, Andrew K. Scherer
Chapter 9: Gender and Sexuality, Traci Ardren
Chapter 10: Human-Animal Relations in the Maya World, Arianne Boileau, Nicolas Delsol, and Kitty F. Emery
Chapter 11: Favored Plants of the Maya, Cameron L. McNeil
Chapter 12: Migration and Mobility in the Eastern Maya Lowlands, Carolyn Freiwald
Part III: Landscapes
Introduction to Landscapes
Chapter 13 Paleoecology, Soil, and Water in Maya History, Timothy Beach, Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, Nicholas Dunning, and Samantha Krause
Chapter 14 Settlement Patterns, Thomas G. Garrison
Chapter 15 Ancient Maya Ports, Port Facilities, and Navigation, Anthony P. Andrews
Chapter 16 Ritual Cave Use Among the Ancient Maya, Holley Moyes
Chapter 17 Ancient Maya Rurality: Old Assumptions, Current Research and New Directions, Céline C. Lamb
Chapter 18 Lakamha: the place of "Big Waters": The archaeology of the ancient city of Palenque, Mexico, Rodrigo Liendo Stuardo
Chapter 19 The Maya City of Caracol, Belize: The Integration of an Anthropogenic Landscape, Arlen F. Chase, Diane Z. Chase, and Adrian S. Z. Chase
Chapter 20: Ek’ Balam: A Maya City In The Urban Landscape of Yucatan, Leticia Vargas De la Peña, Alejandra Alonso Olvera, Víctor R. Castillo Borges, and Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo
Part IV: Relations
Introduction to Relations
Chapter 21 Household Archaeology of the Classic Period Lowland Maya, Nancy Gonlin
Chapter 22 Inequality and social groups, Scott R. Hutson
Chapter 23 Maya Relations with the Material World, Eleanor Harrison-Buck
Chapter 24 Maya Commerce, Eleanor M. King
Chapter 25 Classic Maya Geopolitics, Simon Martin
Chapter 26 The Politics of Conflict: War before and beyond the State in Maya Society, Omar Alcover Firpi and Charles Golden
Part V: Production
Introduction to Production
Chapter 27: Ancient Maya Agriculture, Nicholas P. Dunning, Timothy Beach, and Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach
Chapter 28: The Maya Forest: A Domesticated Landscape, Anabel Ford
Chapter 29: The Complexity of Ancient Maya Craft Production, Michael G. Callaghan and Brigitte Kovacevich
Chapter 30: Animating Materials: The Sculpted Forms of the Ancient Maya World, Megan E. O’Neil
Chapter 31: Maya Mural Painting, Heather Hurst
Chapter 32: Recent Developments in Maya Epigraphic Research, Mallory E. Matsumoto and Nicholas P. Carter
Chapter 33: Maya Time, David Stuart
Chapter 34: Maya Rites, Rituals, and Ceremonies, Miguel Astor-Aguilera
Part VI: Interactions
Introduction to Interactions
Chapter 35: Olmecs and Other Western Neighbors, Takeshi Inomata
Chapter 36: Interactions between Ancient Teotihuacan and the Maya World, Sabura Sugiyama and
Nawa Sugiyama
Chapter 37: Southeast Mesoamerica, Edward Schortman and Patricia Urban
Chapter 38: Classic and Postclassic Peoples of the Pacific Coast, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos
Chapter 39: The Northern Maya Tollans, William M. Ringle
Part VII: Resilience, Legacies, and Transformations
Introduction to Resilience, Legacies, and Transformations
Chapter 40: Collapse, Transformation, Reorganization: The Terminal Classic Transition in the Maya World, Jason Yaeger
Chapter 41: The Structures of Everyday Life in the Postclassic Urban Setting of Mayapan, Marilyn A. Masson and Timothy S. Hare
Chapter 42: Colonial Entanglements at Tahcabo, Yucatán, Patricia A. McAnany, Ivan Batun Alpuche, and Maia Dedrick
Chapter 43: The Archaeology of Henequen Haciendas: San Pedro Cholul as a Case Study, Héctor Hernández Álvarez, Lilia Fernández Souza, and Mario Zimmermann
Chapter 44: Lacandon Maya Culture: Continuity and Change, Joel W. Palka
Biography
Scott R. Hutson teaches at the University of Kentucky, USA. He has written the books The Ancient Urban Maya (2016) and Dwelling, Identity, and the Maya (2010). He also edited Ancient Maya Commerce: Multi-disciplinary Research at Chunchucmil (2017) and co-wrote (with Ian Hodder) the third edition of Reading the Past (2003). He has been doing fieldwork in the Maya Lowlands, usually focusing on household archaeology, settlement patterns, and ritual practice, since 1996.
Traci Ardren is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Miami, USA. She is an anthropological archaeologist interested in issues of identity and other forms of symbolic representation in the archaeological record. Traci is co-director of the Proyecto Sacbe Yaxuna-Coba, at the Classic Maya site of Yaxuna, in Yucatan, Mexico where she investigates the ways ancient road systems allowed for the flow of information and ideas as well as how culinary tourism and modern foodways intersect. As Consulting Curator for Mesoamerican Art, Traci curated a number of exhibits of ancient New World art at the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami.
"A compendium that brings together the latest research built on deep foundations of archaeological, historical, paleo-ecological, and epigraphic study. A must for the bookshelf of every investigator of the ancient Maya!" - Dr. Mary Miller, Getty Research Institute, USA
"A volume of unprecedented riches, this book instructs, guides, and inspires with its far-ranging and lucid essays about ancient Maya civilization. My main regret is not having this compendium as a student! It will lead us all forward. Majestic and authoritative." - Dr. Stephen D. Houston, Brown University, USA
"It has been generations since Maya studies had a really great handbook for students, experts and everyone interested in the subject. This sharply current book delivers. The Maya World is a superb compendium of finely written, intellectually exciting and highly informative essays by leading experts in the field. I will turn to it regularly and I recommend everyone else who reads it do the same." - David A. Freidel, Washington University, St. Louis, USA
"A rich collection of up-to-date essays by top authorities on all aspects of the culture, politics, livelihood and achievements of the ancient Maya. A triumph of scholarship, it can be read with profit by specialists and students, as well as by visitors to the realm of the Maya." - Michael D. Coe (1929-2019), Yale University, USA
