The Maya World

1. Introduction
2. Archaic Maya matters
3. Public architecture and the rise of complexity in the Middle Preclassic
4. The southern Maya Lowlands in the Late Preclassic
5. The Late Preclassic Pacifc slope
6. The Maya Highlands and the Late Preclassic: Kaminaljuyu as a case study
7. Maya bioarchaeology
8. Graves, dead bodies, souls, and ancestors
9. Gender and sexuality
10. Human-animal relations in the Maya world
11. Favored plants of the Maya
12. Migration and mobility in the eastern Maya Lowlands
13. Paleoecology, soil, and water in Maya history
14. Settlement patterns
15. Ancient Maya ports, port facilities, and navigation
16. Ritual cave use among the ancient Maya
17. Ancient Maya rurality: old assumptions, current research, and new directions
18. Lakamha: the place of “Big Waters”: the archaeology of the ancient city of Palenque, Mexico
19. The Maya city of Caracol, Belize: the integration of an anthropogenic landscape
20. Ek’ Balam: a Maya city in the urban landscape of Yucatan
21. Household archaeology of the Classic period Lowland Maya
22. Inequality and social groups
23. Maya relations with the material world
24. Maya commerce
25. Classic Maya geopolitics
26. The politics of conflict: war before and beyond the state in Maya society
27. Ancient Maya agriculture
28. The Maya forest: a domesticated landscape
29. The complexity of ancient Maya craft production
30. Animating materials: the sculpted forms of the ancient Maya world
31. Maya mural painting
32. Recent developments in Maya epigraphic research
33. Maya time
34. Maya rites, rituals, and ceremonies
35. Olmecs and other western neighbors
36. Interactions between Ancient Teotihuacan and the Maya world
37. Southeast Mesoamerica
38. Classic and Postclassic peoples of the Pacifc coast
39. The northern Maya Tollans
40. Collapse, transformation, reorganization: the Terminal Classic transition in the Maya world
41. The structures of everyday life in the Postclassic urban setting of Mayapan
42. Colonial entanglements at Tahcabo, Yucatán
43. The archaeology of Henequen Haciendas: San Pedro Cholul as a case study
44. Lacandon Maya culture: continuity and change

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.