Pre-Columbian Maya myths tell of a world that is variously created and destroyed—sometimes the end is caused by a cataclysmic flood, sometimes by monstrous beasts, sometimes by animated and furious grinding stones and cooking pots. Cosmic recreation ensues. Maya origin stories, however, are at odds with those in Pathways to complexity. This volume does not tell of fits and starts. Rather, the 16 chapters gathered here offer richly detailed linear narratives, inevitable progressions that, as the editors write, “culminated in the state among the ancient Maya” (p. 10).
In their Introduction, the editors state that participants in the symposium from which the book arose more than 10 years ago (at the 2004 American Anthropological Association meetings) were “asked to emphasize the empirical data from their recent research” (p. 10). Their invited contributors acquiesced. Lengthy discussions about radiocarbon dates, excavation contexts, architectural features and ceramic types and varieties underscore both the rapid accumulation of new archaeological evidence and major gaps that remain to be filled. The wealth of evidence offered throughout the volume allows the reader to follow its internal debates.
Many of the claims, and much of the controversy, rest on ceramic chronologies. Chapter 4 (Andrews, Bey and Gunn), for example, outlines evidence for pushing back the timing of the adoption of pottery-making in northern Yucatan by several centuries. Yet just how far back is uncertain, as is the nature of that first pottery and the identity of those who made it. The authors argue that the earliest ceramics were produced by the inhabitants of small villages around 900–800 BC, but were replaced by new forms and styles within a century or so, in tandem with the advent of monumental architecture, as a result of the diffusion of ideas (and perhaps migrations of people) from the south. Robles and Ceballos (Chapter 9), on the other hand, interpret the same data as evidence that people in northern Yucatan simultaneously began making pottery and building platforms around 1000 BC as a distinct and independent regional tradition that remained unchanged until 400 BC. The editors themselves claim that there were many centuries of ceramic continuity in the region. And yet, they also refer to the Middle Preclassic (from 1000–300 BC) as “the most dynamic period of Maya history” (p. 388). These discussions left me wondering: how can archaeologists reconcile these apparent inconsistencies between innovation and conservatism? Perhaps we should be cautious about equating what appears to us as ceramic variation (or a lack thereof) with either cultural continuity or change.
Beyond ceramic matters, several chapters in the volume address issues of when and how institutionalised rulership began and when kings first became divine. Some authors trace Maya kingship to the Olmec of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Freidel (Chapter 15), for example, explicitly argues that fundamental tenets of Maya socio-political complexity—maize as a staple commodity, the cult of the maize god and divine (although non-dynastic) rulership—all originated with the Olmec. At El Achiotal, Acuña (Chapter 13) suggests that fluency in both Olmec and Maya cultural institutions legitimised early kingship, especially in frontier zones defined by interregional interactions. Others argue that the Maya developed their own symbols of hierarchy and iconography of rulership alongside the Olmec (e.g. Hansen et al.; Robles and Ceballos). Saturno, Rossi and Beltrán (Chapter 13) trace architectural and ideological developments that mark a shift at San Bartolo from leaders as mediators in celebrations of broader cosmic phenomena to a state-aligned ‘rebranding’ as Maya kings became divine forces in their own right. Throughout many of the chapters, the early emphasis on the institution of rulership across the Maya lowlands—rather than individual rulers—raises intriguing but unanswered questions about whether pathways to complexity must necessarily involve hierarchical political systems.
Although the detailed empirical evidence presented in each chapter is welcome, the book is sometimes lacking in synthetic assessments or overviews. From Chapter 2 onwards, I wished and waited for a table or chart comparing the ceramic and absolute chronologies discussed at length throughout the book. Moreover, while several important questions are raised by the volume's Introduction (Brown and Bey)—when and how did people arrive in the Maya lowlands? Did those same people settle down and become ceramic-producing communities? If so, when? What did early ritual and religion look like? How did those people and institutions support emerging elites?—more basic issues are never addressed. What, for example, is ‘complexity’? What makes a site, its architecture or its artefacts (especially those not yet ‘complex’) identifiably ‘Maya’? Fig. 1.1 provides the standard map of the area and sites discussed in the text, but without any explanation of how we know ‘the Maya area’ to have been constant across millennia. The effect can be unsettling—at times I felt as if I had walked in late to the conference session on which the book is based.
The volume's contributions and contributors are diverse. The balance between male and female, junior and senior, and international and U.S.-based scholars is refreshing, as is the range of explanations that the authors provide for each site's ‘pathway to complexity’. Feasting and ancestor veneration (Brown, Awe and Garber), manipulations of marine shell resources (Hohmann, Powis and Healy), labour intensification and specialisation (Hansen et al.; Gallareta), control of important trade routes (Robles and Ceballos), and regional pilgrimage (Arroyo), among others, are all highlighted as catalysts in socio-political transformations. As with the Introduction, however, the conclusion falls short in synthesising the overall importance of those various chapters for a general (or even specialised) reader. The final summation is underwhelming: pathways to complexity in the Maya lowlands were “based on the development of social hierarchies in which communities practised a set of behaviours (competitive displays, gift-giving and feasts) embedded in the maize cult that led to certain individuals or groups acquiring prestige within the community” (p. 414). Still, the volume succeeds in the editors’ goal to bring together recent advancements in studies of the development of Maya civilisation. Their hope that new discoveries and data will refine its conclusions will also surely be filled.
