Edited volumes that emerge from conference panels are often mixed bags, and Maya Worldviews at Conquest is one such book. Based on a group of papers presented to the Society for American Archaeology in 2004, the volume contains essays of varying originality, significance and polish. A few are poorly written, and a few reflect a weak grasp of the historical context and scholarly literature beyond their own focus. Such expected infelicities of the genre aside, however, there is much of value in this collection. In the end, it makes an important contribution to two fields of study.
The 17 scholars who between them contribute the book's 16 chapters are primarily archaeologists, but there are also representatives from other branches of anthropology, art history, history and religious studies. Despite this plurality, the volume retains a notable degree of geographic, temporal and theoretical coherence. In geographical terms, the authors either refer to the Maya area as a whole or restrict their case studies to northern Yucatán, highland Guatemala or the swathe of settlements running from Belize through the Petén to Chiapas. In terms of time period, the chapters focus on the late post-classic and early colonial periods (roughly the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries).
With respect to theoretical coherence, the authors all attempt to articulate their research and conclusions in terms of Maya worldviews. By this they mean ‘how the Maya viewed their universe and their place within it’ (p. 7), how they (primarily the elite) took ideas and beliefs from the past in order to understand and manage the present, and how they forged ‘culturally organized systems of knowledge’ (p. 4) in order to conceive and understand their relationship to space and time, and their relationships with other people.
The book is well organised and produced; there are some 60 illustrations (including maps), an excellent index (I suspect it was compiled by the editors, for which they are to be commended) and a single, comprehensive 70-page bibliography of references (which alone makes this book worth owning).
The chapters fall loosely into two categories. One is that of essays that approach the theme of the volume from a particular conceptual or topical perspective. For example, Elizabeth Graham and Prudence M. Rice offer insightful essays that, respectively, ponder how our own worldviews might influence our study of Maya worldviews, and how the whole topic might best be seen through the prism of Maya concepts of time. The Chases, Diane Z. and Arlen F., examine how religious concepts of death were altered by the introduction of Christianity.
The other category of essays centres on a case-study approach. Co-editor Leslie G. Cecil, for example, focuses on archaeological evidence, especially pottery, from post-classic Tipu (in today's Belize). Susan Milbrath and Carlos Peraza Lope look at a potential ‘clash of worldviews’ among the Maya in Mayapán (northern Yucatán) in the couple of centuries preceding the Spanish invasions. John F. Chuchiak uses archival evidence, mostly from Seville, to show how the Maya in north-west Yucatán maintained effigy censers and other ‘idols’ for almost two centuries after the Spanish colony was founded. Gabrielle Vail takes codices as her source – those named after Dresden, Paris and Madrid – teasing out elements of Maya creation mythology. Mark Howell uses music among the K'iche' Maya of Guatemala as his window onto Maya worldview changes stemming from Spanish colonialism.
To which two fields of study does the book therefore contribute? One, most obviously, is that of Maya studies. The multidisciplinary combination of essays and case studies detailed above makes this a unique and valuable contribution to a field whose focus is typically classic period archaeology. The other is a far newer field or school of study, one that has emerged in the past 15 years or so and is increasingly referred to as the new conquest history (NCH). The NCH turns the traditional narratives of the Spanish conquests in the Americas upside down, privileging native sources and perspectives – but not exclusively so. Thus Maya Worldviews at Conquest contributes to the NCH not simply because it contains new work on, or work that is germane to, the Spanish conquests of Maya lands, but because it showcases multiple sources, methods and approaches to the topic. To borrow a phrase from co-editor Timothy W. Pugh, ‘diversity resulted in differential responses’ (p. 331); our understanding of the purpose, nature and evolution of those responses is advanced by this volume.
