Customer Reviews

Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship in Ancient Maya Society

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This book is a well-written, thoroughly-researched examination of ancient Maya political structures, both as models and in actual functioning. It is based on Classic information sources, Colonial documentation and modern anthropological observation and discusses the tensions, pitfalls and benefits generated by the Maya way of political organization. I've read several works on Maya politics in the past few years, and though this volume is slim it is rich with both data and discussion of how the data can be viewed to rebuild a functional political system. Professor McAnany is much less interested in creating an elegant theory and much more concerned with trying to postulate how Maya politics actually worked, based on what the Maya themselves tell us. For those with an interest in the Maya this is an important book which pulls together older political theories and the latest information in a way that breathes life into the ruined cities and the people who built them.