The first Maya civilization : ritual and power before the classic period

When the Maya kings of Tikal dedicated their first carved monuments in the third century A.D., inaugurating the Classic period of Maya history that lasted for six centuries and saw the rise of such famous cities as Palenque, Copan and Yaxchilan, Maya civilization was already nearly a millennium old. Its first cities, such as Nakbe and El Mirador, had some of the largest temples ever raised in Prehispanic America, while others such as Cival showed even earlier evidence of complex rituals. The reality of this Preclassic Maya civilization has been documented by scholars over the past three decades: what had been seen as an age of simple village farming, belatedly responding to the stimulus of more advanced peoples in highland Mesoamerica, is now know to have been the period when the Maya made themselves into one of the New World's most innovative societies. This book discusses the most recent advances in our knowledge of the Preclassic Maya and the emergence of their rainforest civilization, with new data on settlement, political organization, architecture, iconography and epigraphy supporting a contemporary theoretical perspective that challenges prior assumptions.

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This timely book addresses a major research question--how to explain the origin of the extraordinary civilization created by the ancient Maya in the rain forests of Guatemala and adjacent areas. The Maya Classic Period, beginning around 250 CE, was thought to be the time of greatest elaboration of cities, with monumental civic and religious architecture, complex political and religious organization, and intellectual and artistic accomplishments. Information about earlier periods has been scarce. Now, there is "an avalanche of new data" from excavations as well as translations of Maya inscriptions that document rulers, interactions among kingdoms, and relationships with distant polities such as Teotihuacan in central Mexico. The main elements of the Classic Period had already appeared by about 900 BCE and were well developed by 500 BCE. Estrada-Belli (Boston Univ.) reviews the archaeological data in detail with full documentation and evaluates previous interpretations. Rather than the specific universal "causes" or evolutionary stages that had been proposed as explanations in the past, he accounts for the origin and development of Maya civilization as gradual historical processes. A provocative, well-reasoned analysis. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. K. A. Dixon emeritus, California State University, Long Beach

List of figures	p. ix
Preface	p. xii
Acknowledgements	p. xv
1 Maya civilization in perspective	p. 1
An overview of Classic Maya research	p. 4
Classic Maya people, places and history	p. 9
The beginnings of Maya civilization	p. 28
2 Trajectories of evolution: Maya archaeology and the Preclassic Maya	p. 31
Theories of the origins of Maya civilization: the first part of the 20th century	p. 31
Theories of the origins of Maya civilization: the second part of the 20th century	p. 33
Peasant pioneers	p. 36
The earliest Lowland farmers	p. 38
Early villages and social ranking	p. 39
Suddenly civilization ? Highland-Lowland migrations, again	p. 44
The Preclassic Maya behemoth	p. 49
3 Maya states before the Classic period	p. 54
The rise of the first Lowland states	p. 54
In the line of the founder: Preclassic royal burials	p. 55
Preclassic kingdoms and the AD 100 "conjuncture" across the Lowlands	p. 61
The dawning of a new era: Tikal	p. 64
4 Planting the seed of civilization: the making of sacred ground	p. 67
Preclassic Maya site planning	p. 67
The earliest monumental works and the making of a civilization	p. 74
The earliest plaza rituals: activating the Maya cosmos	p. 78
5 Earth-mountain-caves and sky-serpent-birds: meta-narratives of Preclassic Maya art	p. 84
The role of hieroglyphic writing in Maya (royal) narratives	p. 110
6 The Preclassic-Classic Maya transition: a new beginning?	p. 117
A "Protoclassic" or "Terminal Preclassic" to Classic transition	p. 117
The eclipse of El Mirador and the rise of Classic kingdoms	p. 119
The rise of new Maya kings and the Teotibuacan "entrada"	p. 122
The puzzling end of El Mirador	p. 128
Environment, politics and friends in high places	p. 129
7 Conclusion	p. 140
A new beginning for Maya studies	p. 141
Long-term and life histories	p. 142
Where do we go from here?	p. 146
Notes	p. 148
References	p. 151
Index	p. 169

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