Results by title
175 books match the query 'Mayas' and 7 start with p
Patron Gods and Patron Lords
The Semiotics of Classic Maya Community CultsJoanne Baron
University Press of Colorado, 2016
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.
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
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.
Pre-Mamom Pottery Variation and the Preclassic Origins of the Lowland Maya
Debra S. Walker
University Press of Colorado, 2022
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
Preclassic Maya Pottery at Cuello, Belize
Laura J. Kosakowsky
University of Arizona Press, 1987
Psychiatric Encounters
Madness and Modernity in Yucatan, MexicoReyes-Foster, Beatriz M.
Rutgers University Press, 2019
Public Loves, Private Troubles
Migration, Technology, and Intimacy in Rural Indigenous GuatemalaMeghan Farley Webb
University of Alabama Press, 2025
Examines the role of digital technologies in the lives of Kaqchikel Maya women whose husbands work abroad.
Anthropologist Meghan Farley Webb’s ethnography, Public Loves, Private Troubles, uses the lens of cellphones and other digital technologies to unpack marriage, love, sexuality, and family issues of Kaqchikel Maya women who remain in Guatemala while their husbands are part of the transnational migration workforce. Indigenous intimacy has been underexplored in ethnographic literature, and this is among the first books to focus on information technology's impact on intimacy and family in the Maya area. Overall, Webb shows how Maya women are empowered with their more autonomous lives when the husbands are absent but also are constrained by social media monitoring of their activities.
To begin, Webb surveys the Tecpán highland setting and civil war and migration history. She discusses how neoliberal policies are manifested in the financial and emotional stress of having to leave for the United States for economic opportunities. Chapter 1 characterizes the lives of Maya women in Guatemala who “endure” while their husbands are working abroad. Webb describes how marriage, family, and even the Catholic Church shape how the women see themselves and their situations. Chapter 2 delves into the history and use of technologies, such as cellphones and WhatsApp, and how they affect communication in these transnational households. Insight is given to the family and personhood. Chapter 3 focuses on the prominent use of the Facebook platform. Men use the app to conduct extramarital affairs, but the app is also used by couples as a way to express a public performance of devotion and a happy family. Chapter 4 focuses on the surveillance, including malicious gossip, that Kaqchikel women are subjected to especially from their mothers-in-law, who live nearby or in the same household. The narrative culminates in a discussion of how many wives are happier and more empowered without the men at home, yet they still can experience uncertainty, loneliness, and depression.
Pulltrouser Swamp
Ancient Maya Habitat, Agriculture, and Settlement in Northern BelizeEdited 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.