The link between the pre-Columbian past and the present has sometimes been underappreciated by Mesoamerican archaeologists. Much disciplinary history runs through a short list of elite North American institutions with histories of research dating back to the nineteenth century. As a result, Mesoamerican archaeology is twisted together, like a cable that includes art history, textual analysis, and criticism, and a vibrant tradition of translation and interpretation of glyphic texts, along with anthropological archaeology, ethnography, and the physical and biological science used to analyze human remains. The chapters in this volume connect the past to the present directly, and they push the reader toward contemplating these connections in various ways and to various extents.

Each chapter brings together fascinating details about how Mesoamerican ideas about fire were expressed in the historical, archaeological, biological, or material records. To take one of many thought-provoking details (360), a 1671 historical account describes how an infant was placed in a hole full of ashes, so that when its animal protector visited, its identity would be revealed by its footprints. Other examples include a compilation of references to fire in Maya codices (277–82), and photographic documentation of Lacandon rubber and resin effigies, to be burned in so called ‘god pots’ (309). The book offers significant breadth of coverage for Mesoamerica, with chapters covering the Lacandon Maya, the northern Yucatan, Tarasco, and the Valley of Mexico, among other areas. Significant differences among the cultures and histories of these regions are balanced by attention to the common threads of Mesoamerican civilization, which puts both factors into clearer focus. Without such a breadth of case studies, the significance of Mesoamerican ideas about fire, smoke, pain, ash, sacrifice, and penitence would not be clear.

Many of the chapters are at considerable pains to bring together ethnographic details of rituals related to fire, and into larger ideas about what those rituals might be able to tell us about traditions extending back into what could be called the longue durée. Mesoamerican archaeology is now capable of connecting information from the ethnographic present to the distant past through the additional resource of glyphic texts on Maya codices. When research from physical anthropology is also included, it multiplies the impact of those studies. For example, the connection between descriptions of various kinds of treatments of human bodies (both living and dead) have distinctive, variable effects on the bones that are left behind. Physical anthropologists can make reasonable interpretations of burned bone that can be compared with the descriptions in historical sources, as well as glyphic texts and detailed iconography. It is clear that Mesoamericans did not think of fire simply as a way to destroy the body.

Several chapters enthusiastically make comparisons with other parts of the Americas and of the world. For some readers, these comparisons might venture too far afield, in both space and time. But in no sense do the contributions of the book devalue historical context, even as they engage in the kind of cross-cultural comparison that brings the conversation closer to current conversations in anthropological theory.

The production values of the book are very high and add significantly to the value of the work. Heavyweight paper, the large format, extensive color illustrations throughout, and careful editing all add to the experience of working with the ideas contained on the page. The price of the volume would make it a reasonable part of a specialized graduate or advanced undergraduate course, and the introductory and concluding essays help to bring the text into larger contexts in Mesoamerican archaeology, religious studies, bioarchaeology, or ethnography. As a resource for historians, this book is a gateway into all of these many literatures, and represents the state of the art on this fascinating topic.