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Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests
Intellectual Interchange between the Northern Maya Lowlands and Highland Mexico in the Late Postclassic Period
Gabrielle Vail
Harvard University Press, 2010
Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests examines evidence for cultural interchange among the intellectual powerbrokers in Postclassic Mesoamerica, specifically those centered in the northern Maya lowlands and the central Mexican highlands. Contributors to the volume’s thirteen chapters bring an interdisciplinary perspective to understanding the interactions that led to shared content in hieroglyphic codices and mural art. The authors address similarities in artifacts, architectural styles, and building alignments—often produced in regions separated by hundreds of miles—based on their analyses of iconographic, archaeological, linguistic, and epigraphic material. The volume includes a wealth of new data and interpretive frameworks in this comprehensive discussion of a critical time period in the Mesoamerican past.
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Faces of Rulership in the Maya Region
Patricia A. McAnany and Marilyn A. Masson
Harvard University Press
Authority—whether royal, divine, material, fleeting, or enduring—varied across space and time in the Maya region, from its Preclassic dynastic origins through the colonial encounters of the sixteenth century. The changing faces of Maya rulership and their foundational ties to symbolic material objects, architecture, ancestral beings, deities, and written monuments are fully explored in the fifteen chapters of Faces of Rulership in the Maya Region. The contributors track rulership—beyond the prevalent paradigm of divine kingship—by considering the power of queens and unravelling codes embedded in art and public buildings. Through the close study of the agency of rulers who often sought to distinguish themselves from other dynasts, the contributors come to an enhanced understanding of the relational dynamics between rulers and subject peoples. The book reveals that rulership was perpetually challenged in ways that impacted adjacent institutions of nobles and literati. Applying concepts of rulership outlined in On Kings by David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins, this volume brings Maya history and archaeology into the current, anthropological conversation about rulership in premodern times.
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In the Realm of Nachan Kan
Postclassic Maya Archaeology at Laguna De On, Belize
Marilyn A. Masson
University Press of Colorado, 2000
The prevailing view of the lowland Maya during the Postclassic period (A.D. 1050-1500) has been one of an impoverished, "degenerated" society devoid of cultural accomplishment. However, Marilyn A. Masson offers a fresh interpretation of this society as one that represented a complex, sophisticated, extensive organization of semiautonomous units that were closely integrated, yet embraced a decentralized political economy.

In the Realm of Nachan Kan opens a window on Postclassic Maya patterns of cultural development and organization through a close examination of the small rural island of Laguna de On, a location that was distant from the governing political centers of the day. Using diachronic analysis of regional settlement patterns, ceramic traditions, household and ritual features, and artifacts from the site, Masson tracks developmental changes throughout the Postclassic period. These data suggest that affluent patterns of economic production and local and long-distance exchange were established within northern Belize by the eleventh century, and continued to develop, virtually uninterrupted, until the time of Spanish arrival.

In addition, Masson analyzes contemporary political and religious artistic traditions at the temples of Mayapan, Tulum, and Santa Rita to provide a regional context for the changes in community patterns at Laguna de On. These cultural changes, she maintains, are closely correlated with the rise of Mayapan to power and participation of sites like Laguna de On in a pan-lowland economic and ritual interaction sphere. Offering a thoroughly new interpretation of Postclassic Mayan civilization. In the Realm of Nachan Kan is a must for scholars of Mesoamerican history and culture.

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front cover of Merchants, Markets, and Exchange in the Pre-Columbian World
Merchants, Markets, and Exchange in the Pre-Columbian World
Kenneth G. Hirth
Harvard University Press, 2013
Merchants, Markets, and Exchange in the Pre-Columbian World examines the structure, scale, and complexity of economic systems in the pre-Hispanic Americas, with a focus on the central highlands of Mexico, the Maya Lowlands, and the central Andes. Civilization in each region was characterized by complex political and religious institutions, highly skilled craft production, and the long-distance movement of finished goods. Scholars have long focused on the differences in economic organization between these civilizations. Societies in the Mexican highlands are recognized as having a highly commercial economy centered around one of the world’s most complex market systems; those of the Maya region are characterized as having reciprocal exchange networks and periodic marketplaces that supplemented the dominant role of the palace; and those of the central Andes are recognized as having multiple forms of resource distribution, including household-to-household reciprocity, barter, environmental complementarity, and limited market exchange. Essays in this volume examine various dimensions of these ancient economies, including the presence of marketplaces, the operation of merchants (and other individuals) who exchanged and moved goods across space, the role of artisans who produced goods as part of their livelihood, and the trade and distribution networks through which goods were bought, sold, and exchanged.
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