Maya Worldviews at Conquest examines Maya culture and social life just prior to contact and the effect the subsequent Spanish conquest, as well as contact with other Mesoamerican cultures, had on the Maya worldview.

Focusing on the Postclassic and Colonial periods, Maya Worldviews at Conquest provides a regional investigation of archaeological and epigraphic evidence of Maya ideology, landscape, historical consciousness, ritual practices, and religious symbolism before and during the Spanish conquest. Through careful investigation, the volume focuses on the impact of conversion, hybridization, resistance, and revitalization on the Mayans’ understanding of their world and their place in it.

The volume also addresses the issue of anthropologists unconsciously projecting their modern worldviews on the culture under investigation. Thus, the book critically defines and strengthens the use of worldviews in the scholarly literature regardless of the culture studied, making it of value not only to Maya scholars but also to those interested in the anthropologist’s projection of worldview on other cultures in general.

Leslie G. Cecil is an assistant professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology at Stephen F. Austin State University, where her research has focused on Postclassic Mayans’ use of pottery to identify themselves as part of a cohesive sociopolitical group. Timothy W. Pugh is an associate professor at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where his research has focused on reconstructing the political geography of fifteenth- to seventeenth-century central Petén, Guatemala.