This sweeping two-volume set updates knowledge about the site of Chichen Itza from the perspectives of archaeology, art history, epigraphy, and ethnohistory, with 34 chapters by 51 authors/coauthors that consider this site, related sites, and historical links to earlier and later Mesoamerican cultures. Lengths of chapters vary greatly, from six to 51 pages, treating topics ranging from a single artifact to a comprehensive review. The publication has a single master bibliography for all chapters. Some typos and bibliographic errors are present and there is no master list of figures and tables, but the tomes are generally well produced. Two chapters are in Spanish, the remainder in English. The abundant illustrations and high-quality images (including in color) greatly enhance the research value of these volumes.
As might be expected for Chichen Itza scholarship, chapters regularly consider the topic of chronology, but the contributors strive toward consensus and diligently cite chronological debates and evidence in the literature. A resolution is proposed in chapters 13 and 14 (by Travis Stanton and George Bey, and Geoffrey Braswell, respectively) in favor of decoupling periods and developmental trajectories from ceramic types, with greater weight assigned to other evidence for political change, or at least, considering ceramic attributes in new ways outside of the type: variety system. Braswell (chapter 14) compellingly argues for two developmental phases associated with Florescent and Modified Florescent architecture, with a disjuncture in the site’s leadership in the AD 900s. David Stuart’s (chapter 11) discussion of the site’s brief, early epigraphic record explores similar implications. Simon Martin (chapter 28) emphasizes the themes of warfare and divine beings in the public monuments of later Chichen Itza. Stuart and Martin refine and improve on models of Chichen Itza’s sociopolitical transformations by recognizing blended conventions and uneven, selected changes to patterns in architecture, art, or political representation through time.
The process of founding or refounding a settlement in the context of fire rituals and ancestor veneration is well explored in complementary chapters by Annabeth Headrick (chapter 3) and Stuart (chapter 11). Fire (and other related) rituals were linked to the establishment of place and the mythic charters of elites. Deity shrines, likely devoted to divine ancestors, and fire rituals were especially important in the early years of Chichen Itza (Stuart, chapter 11). Stuart discusses earlier precedents for Maya area lords of fire (yajawk’ahk’) at Palenque and nearby sites.
Ten chapters (1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 16, 33, and 34) build on prior work of Karl Taube, one of the editors, on the topic of a flowery, paradisiacal afterlife place promised to warriors dying in service to the state. Related themes analyzed include solar entities, paths, myths, fire lords (or priests, or rituals), rain priests, and feathered serpent imagery (Stanton et al., chapter; Headrick, chapter 3; Jeremy Coltman, chapter 8; Maria Teresa Uriarte, chapter 18; Iván Hernández Ibar and Guilhem Olivier, chapter 23; Cecilia Klein, chapter 30). Laura Solar Valverde (chapter 34) cautions that the iconography of this period reflects varied representations of serpents (see also chapters 3 and 30), trees, vines, mirrors, and other plants that attest to meanings (some locally derived) beyond the paradigm of flowery paradise and solar entities. However, she agrees that the concept of the sacred flower world was widely shared cross-culturally among certain New World Indigenous societies. Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos (chapter 7) also argues in favor of local origins of the specific forms of flowery vines in Cotzumalhuapan representations of the Pacific Coast.
Some chapters trace mythological concepts from Teotihuacan’s Classic periods into the Maya area and into greater Mesoamerica after Teotihuacan fell. Analogies to later Aztec thought abound, and contributors consider how Teotihuacan legacy concepts were regenerated at Chichen Itza prior to their emergence in Late Postclassic central Mexico (Stanton et al., chapter 1; Claudia Brittenham and Virginia Miller, chapter 4; Michael Mathiowetz, chapter 5; John Pohl, chapter 9; Klein, chapter 30). This phenomenon relates to earlier patterns of Teotihuacan revivalism in the Maya area, particularly in contexts of warfare (Stuart, chapter 11). Nawa Sugiyama (chapter 2) reminds us that Maya emissaries were in residence at Teotihuacan, at least for a while (also, chapter 4, Brittenham and Miller). Examining ethnic markers anew at Chichen Itza, Martin (chapter 28) interprets this site’s pluralism comparatively, in the context of foreign-appearing actors at southern Classic period sites of the AD 800s.
There is growing recognition of the sun’s journey as important to Chichen Itza’s mythology, of which feathered serpent imagery was one component (Stanton et al., chapter 1; Coltman, chapter 8). Comparatively, epic heroes’ journeys traversed cosmological spaces in many instances in Mesoamerican lore, and cult centers helped to unite Mesoamerican ritualists over broad distances into the Late Postclassic period (Pohl, chapter 9). Such voyages are also known for Maya actors during the Classic period (Taube and Kenichiro Tsukamoto, chapter 33). Sun deities and their affiliations with Maya kings have long-standing roots prior to Chichen Itza (Stuart, chapter 11). Sun disk figures on Chichen Itza’s Upper Temple of the Jaguars murals are freshly interpreted in light of personifications of the Sun God at the site, along with themes of warrior dances related to sun rituals and journeys (Uriarte, Ch. 18). Heart extraction at Chichen Itza was also likely related to rituals pertaining to the sun’s journey (Stanton et al., chapter 1; Coltman, chapter 8). Other forms of sacrifice and postmortem processing in the Maya area after Teotihuacan’s fall were likely due to a complex array of militaristic and ritual practices, according to Vera Tiesler and Judith Ruiz González (chapter 32).
Some chapters consider the material trappings of authority and sacred places. Flowery world imagery is bejeweled and evokes senses of sight, smell, and sound with birds, insects, cacao, jade, flowers, and ancestral souls; flower-marked temples were flower mountains and dwelling places of ancestors (Coltman, chapter 8; Taube and Tsukamoto, chapter 33). Precious goods flowing into Chichen Itza (and elsewhere) signified holy and renowned regalia, events, and people. Exchanges of precious objects made social and ritual relationships tangible (Pohl, chapter 9). Gold in particular symbolized the sun (Mathiowetz, chapter 5; Mary Miller chapter 19) and the sheen of Tohil Plumbate pottery similarly embodied reflective properties (Keith Jordan, chapter 6). A deeper consideration of the timing of plumbate pottery production in the Soconusco region is offered by Hector Neff et alia (chapter 31). The “Tula” vase (likely a Maya vase) is one such special object, painted with an enthroned person framed by the cosmological principles explored in this publication (Taube et al., chapter 10). The Sacred Cenote Disk H is another (Mary Miller, chapter 19).
Archaeologists will appreciate the detailed studies of architecture, stratigraphy, and pottery offered in chapters 12–17 and 20. Chapter 12 by Socorro del Pilar Jiménez Álvarez et alia offers stratigraphic and ceramic analysis from the Temple of the Three Lintels. The architecture and art programs of the Initial Series Group are considered in light of cosmological principles by Marengo Camacho et alia (chapter 16). A deep dive into the details of UCSD’s investigations of the Great Platform by Braswell (chapter 14) engages debates about the site in a productive way (chapter 14). José Francisco Osorio León et alia (chapter 15) and Rafael Cobos (chapter 17) supply comprehensive overviews and comparisons of key architectural features and groups at Chichen Itza. Both chapters offer new insights regarding the temporal changes and differentiation in feature clusters and settlement at the site. Stanton and Bey (Travis 13) advocate for a ceramic system approach to move beyond the micro approaches currently used. They provide a valuable table of published radiocarbon dates relevant to Chichen Itza’s chronology. Jeffrey Glover and Dominique Rissolo (chapter 20) review important coastal sites and their role in exchange networks through time.
Tula’s influence is now broadly recognized outside of the Maya area (Martin, chapter 28). Interaction across Mesoamerica is considered for the Mixtec area by Pohl (chapter 9) and the Pacific coast by Chinchilla Mazariegos (chapter 7). Andrew Turner and Cynthia Kristan-Graham (chapter 21) assess Tula’s art in detail and Tula’s relationship to other interesting and important sites to the north and west. The complex relationships of one of these sites with Tula, El Cerrito (Queretero), with a rich monumental record, is considered more deeply in chapter 22 by Jasper Nielson and colleagues. Studies of US Southwest art and lore have contributed to the comparative understanding of Mesoamerican flowery solar paradise concepts (Coltman, chapter 8). In Ch. 23, Hernández Ibar and Olivier review Postclassic rock paintings from Ixtapantongo related to the birth of the sun myth at the site of Mal País (Estado de México). Gabriela Uruñuela y Ladrón de Guevara and Patricia Plunket Nagoda (chapter 24) offer a detailed summary of the chronology of developments at Cholua, following Teotihuacan, into the influential period of Toltec ascendance ascendancy. Aurelio López Corral (chapter 25) offers a review for the Puebla-Tlaxcala area, tracking material changes and continuities from the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic. Tlaxcallan became more important in the Late Postclassic, he notes. The Rio Verde Valley of Oaxaca, according to Pascale Meehan et alia (chapter 26) experienced a series of disjunctures and restructuring, generally seeing a decentralization of political hierarchy in the early Postclassic period. Small polities in the Chiapas highlands apparently remained stable through the eleventh century, likely due to their favorable positioning for trade, as Elizabeth Paris et alia (chapter 27) detail. Contemporary developments, including situational identity construction and selective adoption of elite and ritual symbols of power, are considered as far as the Greater Nicoya region by Alexander Geurds (chapter 29).
Overall, this set offers a valuable and long overdue compilation of data and interpretations regarding Chichen Itza and its peers. This publication has no precedent and will serve as a key reference for scholarship on the site and this period for years to come.
