War Owl Falling: Innovation, Creativity, and Culture Change in Ancient Maya Society (Maya Studies)

Markus Eberl

ISBN 10: 0813080800 / ISBN 13: 9780813080802

Published by University Press of Florida, 2025

About this Item

2025. paperback. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780813080802

Bibliographic Details

• Title: War Owl Falling: Innovation, Creativity, and Culture Change in Ancient Maya Society (Maya Studies)
• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813080800
• ISBN 13: 9780813080802
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

An archaeological exploration of the role of creativity and invention in the ancient Maya civilization

Drawing on archaeological findings from the Maya lowlands, War Owl Falling shows how innovation and creativity led to social change in ancient societies. Markus Eberl discusses the ways eighth-century Maya (and Maya commoners in particular) reinvented objects and signs that were associated with nobility, including scepters, ceramic vessels, ballgame equipment, and the symbol of the owl. These innovations, he argues, reflect assertions of independence and a redistribution of power that contributed to the Maya collapse in the Late Classic period.

Eberl emphasizes that decision-making—the ability to imagine alternate worlds and to act on that vision—plays a large role in changing social structure over time. Contextualizing these decisions in his "Garden of Forking Paths" model, Eberl shows how innovators were those individuals who imagined an array of possible futures and negotiated power to reach desirable outcomes. He dissects the social underpinning of Maya creativity by illustrating their situated method of learning via observation and imitation, stressing that societal constraints or opportunities dictated whether members' ideas were realized. Pinpointing where and when Maya inventions emerged, how individuals adopted them and why, War Owl Falling connects technological and social change in a novel way.

A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

About the Author

Markus Eberl, associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University, is the author of Community and Difference: Change in Late Classic Maya Villages of the Petexbatun Region and Muerte, entierro y ascención: Ritos funerarios entre los antiguos mayas.