BiblioVault - Books about Mayas

Patron Gods and Patron Lords

The Semiotics of Classic Maya Community Cults

Joanne Baron

University Press of Colorado, 2016

In the first comprehensive treatment of Classic Maya patron deity veneration, Joanne P. Baron demonstrates the central importance of patron deity cults in political relationships between both rulers and their subjects and among different Maya kingdoms. Weaving together evidence from inscriptions, images, and artifacts, Patron Gods and Patron Lords provides new insights into how the Classic Maya polity was organized and maintained.

Using semiotic theory, Baron draws on three bodies of evidence: ethnographies and manuscripts from Postclassic, Colonial, and modern Maya communities that connect patron saints to pre-Columbian patron gods; hieroglyphic texts from the Classic period that discuss patron deity veneration; and excavations from four patron deity temples at the site of La Corona, Guatemala. She shows how the Classic Maya used patron deity effigies, temples, and acts of devotion to negotiate group membership, social entitlements, and obligations between individuals and communities. She also explores the wider role of these processes in politics, arguing that rituals and discourses related to patron deities ultimately formulated Maya rulership as a locally oriented institution, which limited the ability of powerful kingdoms to create wider religious communities.

Applying a new theoretical approach for the archaeological study of ideology and power dynamics, Patron Gods and Patron Lords reveals an overlooked aspect of the belief system of Maya communities.

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Place and Identity in Classic Maya Narratives

Alexandre Tokovinine

Harvard University Press

Understanding the ways in which human communities define themselves in relation to landscapes has been one of the crucial research questions in anthropology. Place and Identity in Classic Maya Narratives addresses this question in the context of the Classic Maya culture that thrived in the lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula and adjacent parts of Guatemala, Belize, and Western Honduras from 350 to 900 CE. The Classic Maya world of numerous polities, each with its own kings and gods, left a rich artistic and written legacy permeated by shared aesthetics and meaning. Alexandre Tokovinine explores the striking juxtaposition of similar cultural values and distinct political identities by looking at how identities were formed and maintained in relation to place, thus uncovering what Classic Maya landscapes were like in the words of the people who created and experienced them. By subsequently examining the ways in which members of Classic Maya political communities placed themselves on these landscapes, Tokovinine attempts to discern Classic Maya notions of place and community as well as the relationship between place and identity.

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Political Ecology in a Yucatec Maya Community

E. N. Anderson with Aurora Dzib Xihum de Cen, Felix Medina Tzuc, and Pastor Valdez Chale

University of Arizona Press, 2005

In Chunhuhub, the Conquest is not a done deal.

Unlike many small tropical towns, Chunhuhub in rural Quintana Roo, Mexico, has not been a helpless victim of international forces. Its people are descendants of heroic Mayans who stood off the Spanish invaders. People in Chunhuhub continue to live largely through subsistence farming of maize and vegetables, supplemented by commercial orchard, livestock, and field crop cultivation. They are, however, also self-consciously “modernizing” by seeking better educational and economic opportunities.

Political Ecology in a Yucatec Maya Community tells the story of Chunhuhub at the beginning of the twenty-first century, focusing on the resource management of plants and animals. E. N. Anderson and his Maya co-authors provide a detailed overview of Maya knowledge of and relationships with the environment, describing how these relationships have been maintained over the centuries and are being transformed by modernization. They show that the Quintana Roo Mayas have been working to find ways to continue ancient and sustainable methods of making a living while also introducing modern techniques that can improve that living. For instance, traditional subsistence agriculture is broadly sustainable at current population densities, but hunting is not, and modern mechanized agriculture has an uncertain future.

Bringing the voice of contemporary Mayas to every page, the authors offer an encyclopedic overview of the region: history, environment, agriculture, medicine, social relations, and economy. Whether discussing the fine points of beekeeping or addressing the problem of deforestation, they provide a remarkably detailed account that immerses readers in the landscape.

Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula have had more than their share of successes—and some failures as well—and as a study in political and cultural ecology, Political Ecology in a Yucatec Maya Community has much to tell us about tropical development and about the human condition. Their experience tells us that if we wish to have not only farms but also mahogany, wildlife, and ecotourism, then further efforts are needed.

As Anderson observes, traditional Maya management, with its immense knowledge base, remains the best—indeed, the only—effective system for making a living from the Yucatán’s harsh landscape. Political Ecology in a Yucatec Maya Community is a compelling testament to the daily life practices of modern peasant farmers that can provide us with clues about more efficient management techniques for the conservation of biodiversity worldwide.

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Preclassic Maya Pottery at Cuello, Belize

Laura J. Kosakowsky

University of Arizona Press, 1987

“Kosakowsky’s book, produced in the clear, easy-to-read and well-designed format . . . is a substantive contribution to Maya ceramic studies. She details the significant changes in the ceramic sequence and in so doing provides the kind of information that enables other ceramicists, and other Mayanists, to compare the Cuello phenomenon with developments elsewhere. Studies such as these are the building blocks of any larger-scale structural understanding of Maya cultural change.”—Journal of Latin American Studies

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Prehistoric Lowland Maya Environment and Subsistence Economy

Mary Pohl

Harvard University Press, 1985

With contributions by Paul Bloom, Helen Sorayya Carr, Edward S. Deevey, Jr., Nancy L. Hamblin, S. E. Garrett-Jones, Hattula Moholy-Nagy, Mary Pohl, Amadeo M. Rea, Don S. Rice, Prudence M. Rice, Julie Stein, B. L. Turner II, Hague H. Vaughan, Richard R. Wilk, Frederick Matthew Wiseman

This volume provides data from interdisciplinary projects produced over the past fifteen years, including palynology, limnology, geography, soil science, faunal analysis, ethnology, and ethnohistory. Centering on differences of opinion rather than on a synthesis of data, this analysis of the methods and theoretical principles by which specialists work yields a unique view of archaeological procedures.

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Pre-Mamom Pottery Variation and the Preclassic Origins of the Lowland Maya

Debra S. Walker

University Press of Colorado, 2022

Pre-Mamom Pottery Variation and the Preclassic Origins of the Lowland Maya summarizes archaeological researchers’ current views on the adoption and first use of pottery across the Maya lowlands. Covering the early Middle Preclassic period, when communities began using and producing pottery for the first time (roughly 1000–600 BC), through to the establishment of a recognizably Maya tradition, termed the Mamom ceramic sphere (about 600–300 BC), the book demonstrates that the adoption was broadly contemporary, with variation in how the new technology was adapted locally.

Analyzing ceramics found at sites in Belize, Petén (Guatemala), and Mexico, the contributors provide evidence that the pre-Mamom expansion of pottery resulted from increased dependence on maize agriculture, exploitation of limestone caprock, and greater reliance on a preexisting system of long-distance exchange. The chapters describe the individual experiences of new potting communities at various sites across the region. They are supplemented by appendixes presenting key chronological data as well as the principal types and varieties of pre-Mamom ceramic complexes across the various spheres: Xe, Eb, Swasey, Cunil, and Ek.

A significant amount of new material has been excavated in the last decade, changing what is known about the early Middle Preclassic period and making Pre-Mamom Pottery Variation and the Preclassic Origins of the Lowland Maya a first read of the early ceramic prehistory of the Maya lowlands. It will be a valuable resource for students and scholars interested in the archaeology of the Maya lowlands, Mesoamerican social complexity, and ceramic technology.

Contributors: E. Wyllys Andrews V, Jaime Awe, George J. Bey III, Ronald L. Bishop, Michael G. Callaghan, Ryan H. Collins, Kaitlin Crow, Sara Dzul Góngora, Jerald Ek, Tomás Gallareta Negrón, Bernard Hermes, Takeshi Inomata, Betsy M. Kohut, Laura J. Kosakowsky, Wieslaw Koszkul, Jon Lohse, Michael Love, Nina Neivens, Terry Powis, Duncan C. Pring, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, Prudence M. Rice, Robert M. Rosenswig, Kerry L. Sagebiel, Donald A. Slater, Katherine E. South, Lauren A. Sullivan, Travis Stanton, Juan Luis Velásquez Muñoz, Debra S. Walker, Michal Wasilewski, Jaroslaw Źrałka

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Psychiatric Encounters

Madness and Modernity in Yucatan, Mexico

Reyes-Foster, Beatriz M.

Rutgers University Press, 2019

Psychiatric Encounters presents an intimate portrait of a public inpatient psychiatric facility in the Southeastern state of Yucatan, Mexico. The book explores the experiences of patients and psychiatrists as they navigate the challenges of public psychiatric care in Mexico. While international reports condemning conditions in Mexican psychiatric institutions abound, Psychiatric Encounters considers the large- and small-scale obstacles to quality care encountered by doctors and patients alike as they struggle to live and act like human beings under inhumane conditions. Beatriz Mireya Reyes-Foster closely examines the impact of the Mexican state’s neoliberal health reforms on how patients access care and doctors perform their duties. Engaging with madness, modernity, and identity, Psychiatric Encounters considers the enduring role of colonialism in the context of Mexico's troubled contemporary mental health care institutions.

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Pulltrouser Swamp

Ancient Maya Habitat, Agriculture, and Settlement in Northern Belize

Edited by B. L. Turner and Peter D. Harrison

University of Texas Press, 1983

Among Mesoamericanists, the agricultural basis of the ancient Maya civilization of the Yucatan Peninsula has been an important topic of research—and controversy. Interest in the agricultural system of the Maya greatly increased as new discoveries showed that the lowland Maya were not limited to slash-and-burn technology, as had been previously believed, but used a variety of more sophisticated agricultural techniques and practices, including terracing, raised fields, and, perhaps, irrigation. Because of the nature of the data and because this form of agricultural technology had been key to explanations of state formation elsewhere in Mesoamerica, raised-field agriculture became a particular focus of investigation.

Pulltrouser Swamp conclusively demonstrates the existence of hydraulic, raised-field agriculture in the Maya lowlands between 150 B.C. and A.D. 850. It presents the findings of the University of Oklahoma's Pulltrouser SwampProject, an NSF-supported interdisciplinary study that combined the talents of archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, paleobotanists, biologists, and zoologists to investigate the remains of the Maya agricultural system in the swampy region of northern Belize.

By examining soils, fossil pollen and other plant remains, gastropods, relic settlements, ceramics, lithics, and other important evidence, the Pulltrouser Swamp team has clearly demonstrated that the features under investigation are relics of Maya-made raised and channelized fields and associated canals. Other data suggest the nature of the swamps in which the fields were constructed, the tools used for construction and cultivation, the possible crops cultivated, and at least one type of settlement near the fields, with its chronology. This verification of raised fields provides dramatic evidence of a large and probably organized workforce engaged in sophisticated and complex agricultural technology. As record of this evidence, Pulltrouser Swamp is a work of seminal importance for all students and scholars of New World prehistory.

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