The Skyband Group is an impressive elite site in the urban core of Copán, Honduras, which is dominated by the palatial compounds of Maya sub-royal nobles. Such grandees often bore court titles showing that they were clients and officials of kings, but also competitors for political power, especially just before the dynastic collapse around AD 800.
This monograph reports the results of the Quiriguá Project Site Periphery Program, five seasons (1975-1979) of archaeological survey and excavation in the 96 km2 immediately adjoining the classic Maya site of Quiriguá. Ashmore identifies and helps us understand where and how the people of Quiriguá lived. She presents detailed material evidence in two data catalogues, for the floodplain settlement adjoining Quiriguá and for sites in the wider periphery. The work situates Quiriguá settlement firmly in a regional context, benefiting from the extraordinary abundance of information amassed in southeastern Mesoamerica since 1979. It sheds new light on the political, economic, and social dynamics of the region including the sometimes-fractious interactions between Quiriguá, its overlords at Copan, and people elsewhere in the Lower Motagua Valley and beyond. Quiriguá Reports, IV
Recent realizations that prehispanic cities in Mesoamerica were fundamentally different from western cities of the same period have led to increasing examination of the neighborhood as an intermediate unit at the heart of prehispanic urbanization. This book addresses the subject of neighborhoods in archaeology as analytical units between households and whole settlements. The contributions gathered here provide fieldwork data to document the existence of sociopolitically distinct neighborhoods within ancient Mesoamerican settlements, building upon recent advances in multi-scale archaeological studies of these communities. Chapters illustrate the cultural variation across Mesoamerica, including data and interpretations on several different cities with a thematic focus on regional contrasts. This topic is relatively new and complex, and this book is a strong contribution for three interwoven reasons. First, the long history of research on the “Teotihuacan barrios” is scrutinized and withstands the test of new evidence and comparison with other Mesoamerican cities. Second, Maya studies of dense settlement patterns are now mature enough to provide substantial case studies. Third, theoretical investigation of ancient urbanization all over the world is now more complex and open than it was before, giving relevance to Mesoamerican perspectives on ancient and modern societies in time and space. This volume will be of interest not only to scholars and student specialists of the Mesoamerican past but also to social scientists and urbanists looking to contrast ancient cultures worldwide.
Original survey research in the Greater Rosario Valley provides the background to this comparative study of three Maya polities (Rosario, Ojo de Agua and Los Encuentros). Comparison of these three adjoining states is made with reference to multiple features including; civic hierarchies, territorial divisions, political boundaries, capitals, civic plaza layouts, residential compositions, population distributions, civic distributions and government sizes. Because these three polities are outside the most heavily urbanised areas of Maya settlement, the role of peripheries is a central theme in this book, which makes advances in the understanding of political centralization, pyramidal vs.hierarchical regimes and the integration of diverse populations divided by status and ethnicity.
"An essential addition to the bookshelves of Mayanists and anyone interested in long-term processes of culture change."--Edward Schortman, Kenyon College "Spans time, space, and disciplines to present well-rounded and actively contested views of the southeastern Guatemala and the northern frontier areas of Honduras and El Salvador. The diversity of the authors and their themes brings something for every reader, including the Ch'orti'."--Judith M. Maxwell, Tulane University The Ch'orti' area--located in present-day Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador--was once the southernmost region of the ancient Maya world. Though thousands of years of tumultuous change have altered the face of the region drastically, many Ch'orti' have preserved their identity and maintained strong cultural ties to their past, and the region generally continues to practice traditions with Ch'orti' roots. The Ch'orti's' connection with the Maya past and modern-day struggles with poverty and cultural encroachment have made the once little-studied Ch'orti' an important subject of anthropological research. The Ch'orti' Maya Area presents a holistic, multidisciplinary and long-term look at these people, their culture, and the region itself. Highlighting research from leading scholars around the globe, this collection is an impressive exploration of the history of human habitation in the area from approximately 3,000 years ago to the present.
Originating in a symposium at the Society of American Archaeology in New Orleans, 1996, the eleven papers presented here explore the past, present and future of surveys and settlement pattern studies in the Americas.
