Maya World

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.

Scott R. Hutson teaches at the University of Kentucky, USA. He has written the books The Ancient Urban Maya (2016) and Dwelling, Identity, and the Maya (2010). He also edited Ancient Maya Commerce: Multi-disciplinary Research at Chunchucmil (2017) and co-wrote (with Ian Hodder) the third edition of Reading the Past (2003). He has been doing fieldwork in the Maya Lowlands, usually focusing on household archaeology, settlement patterns, and ritual practice, since 1996.

Traci Ardren is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Miami, USA. She is an anthropological archaeologist interested in issues of identity and other forms of symbolic representation in the archaeological record. Traci is co-director of the Proyecto Sacbe Yaxuna-Coba, at the Classic Maya site of Yaxuna, in Yucatan, Mexico where she investigates the ways ancient road systems allowed for the flow of information and ideas as well as how culinary tourism and modern foodways intersect. As Consulting Curator for Mesoamerican Art, Traci curated a number of exhibits of ancient New World art at the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami.