Architecture and the Origins of Preclassic Maya Politics

This book examines the emergence of political institutions in Maya civilization through studies of landscape, architecture and material culture.

James Doyle (Author)

9781107145375, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 March 2017

182 pages, 50 b/w illus. 2 colour illus. 5 maps
26 x 18.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.58 kg

Architecture and the Origins of Preclassic Maya Politics highlights the dramatic changes in the relationship of ancient Maya peoples to the landscape and to each other in the Preclassical period (ca. 2000 BC–250 AD). Offering a comprehensive history of Preclassic Maya society, James Doyle focuses on recent discoveries of early writing, mural painting, stone monuments, and evidence of divine kingship that have reshaped our understanding of cultural developments in the first millennium BC. He also addresses one of the crucial concerns of contemporary archaeology: the emergence of political authorities and their subjects in early complex polities. Doyle shows how architectural trends in the Maya Lowlands in the Preclassic period exhibit the widespread cross-cultural link between monumental architecture of imposing intent, human collaboration, and urbanism.

1. Introduction
2. Setting
3. Mesoamerican and Maya monumentality, identity, and politics
4. Middle Preclassic Maya E-group plazas: distribution and geopolitics 800–300 BC
5. The architecture and spaces of the early Ajaw, c.300–1 BC
6. Migration and abandonment
7. The Preclassic big picture.

Subject Areas: Social theory [JHBA], Landscape archaeology [HDL], Architecture [AM]