Childness, Humanness, and Violence among the Classic Maya Elite

438 PHOENIX Theater of the People: Spectators and Society in Ancient Athens. By David Kawalko Roselli. Austin: University of Texas Press. 2011. Pp. 285. To Plato, the mass audience was a threat to political order and to the appreciation of art. In recent scholarship, from Vernant and Vidal-Naquet to Winkler and Zeitlin, the collective audience and its role in the development of Athenian democracy has been celebrated.1 In Theater of the People, the first book-length treatment of the ancient Athenian audience, David Kawalko Roselli navigates between ancient and modern perspectives and argues that the idea of a collective or mass audience was always in tension with the many points of view that spectators brought to the theater. In this valuable book, Roselli collects wide-ranging evidence and organizes it in the service of several important questions: Who was in the Athenian theater audience and when? How influential was the audience and in what ways? How did the physical arrangements of the theatron (seating area) and the changing economics of the theater affect the composition of the audience? In the first chapter, “The Idea of the Audience,” Roselli examines various aspects of the relationship between the ancient Athenian audience, theater practitioners, and the political elite. The chapter is subdivided into ten sections (e.g., Crazy about Drama, Capturing the Audience, Who Judges?), some of which are further divided into subsections (the subsections of Celebratory Performance in Drama are, for example, Performing Victory in Tragedy, Satyric Victories, and New Comedy and Beyond). To some extent these sections help organize the material, but many of the topics (judging, audience response, etc.) are threaded through the sections and the chapter is better read as an extended and learned meditation on the nature of the audience. In “Critical Views of the Theater Audience,” one of the last sections of the chapter, Roselli steps back to consider two key sources, Thucydides and Plato, within the larger context of democracy and popular influence on government. In this section, but also over the course of the chapter as a whole, Roselli contributes to the lively debate in current scholarship on the relationship between Greek drama and the Athenian democracy. Chapters Two (“Space and Spectators in the Theater”) and Three (“The Economics of the Theater: Theoric Distributions and Class Divisions”) take up practical questions about audience seating arrangements, ticket sales, and the financing of productions. Roselli shows how developments in these practical arrangements changed the composition of the Athenian audience over the course of the classical and hellenistic periods. The composition of the audience can be glimpsed through the comments of Attic dramatists (Chapter Three, especially 110–115) and Roselli concludes that, in the classical period, “In light of the available space, finances and the sociology of the population of Athens . . . it seems inescapable that more than half of the spectators on any festival day were poor” (116). In the late classical and hellenistic periods, however, the audience gradually became more homogeneous, not least because, in this later period, “if you were watching the performance, you had to pay cash” (116). At the heart of Chapter Two, and important to the book as a whole, is Roselli’s argument that there was an unofficial and free viewing space north of the theater of Dionysus through the fifth and some of the fourth century (72–75). This unofficial seating area allowed poorer spectators, and, notably, 1 J. P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet, Mythe et tragédie en Grèce ancienne (Paris 1972 and 1986, vols. 1 and 2); J. Winkler and F. Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context (Princeton 1990). BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 439 non-citizens to attend the theater. As Roselli describes in Chapter Three, when this free area was built over and tickets began to be sold for all seats at the festival, state funds (theorika) were made available to subsidize attendance costs. These, however, were disbursed only to citizens (87), whereas, at least in theory, women, slaves, foreigners, and non-citizens of all sorts had been able to watch from the uncontrolled viewing space in earlier years. In developing this history of the changing Athenian...

This paper shows the existence of the transportation and exchange of goods that could not be produced, or were not even present locally, to satisfy a community’s self-consumption, due to an increase in population during the late Classic in the Maya area. Although some studies discuss the exchange of goods in Maya society during the Classic period, they are usually centered on the objects employed by the Maya elites. In this case, I will analyze the role of salt as an indicator of the existence of exchange activities using the evidence available in the mural paintings in the Maya city of Calakmul. The need of the mineral for human consumption, the lack of local sources of the mineral, and the long distance to salt sources, set the stage for exchange travels in order to import it to Calakmul.

This paper shows the existence of the transportation and exchange of goods that could not be produced, or were not even present locally, to satisfy a community’s self-consumption, due to an increase in population during the late Classic in the Maya area. Although some studies discuss the exchange of goods in Maya society during the Classic period, they are usually centered on the objects employed by the Maya elites. In this case, I will analyze the role of salt as an indicator of the existence of exchange activities using the evidence available in the mural paintings in the Maya city of Calakmul. The need of the mineral for human consumption, the lack of local sources of the mineral, and the long distance to salt sources, set the stage for exchange travels in order to import it to Calakmul.

Many facets of the ancient Maya diet have been studied through paleobotany, bone-chemistry research, paleopathology as well as other traditional archeological methods (Boot 2005; White 1999; Wright 2006). Epigraphic studies of late have also begun to contribute to our overall understanding of certain foodstuffs used by the ancient Maya elite during the Classic and Post-classic periods (Reents-Budet 1994; Houston et al. 2006). The results from this productive union of epigraphy and science have opened the door to understanding the specific uses of many Maya ceramic vessels and have further helped to unlock the nature and content of Maya hieroglyphic writing. We now know that many Maya vessels were labeled with “name tags,” essentially designators of vessel type and descriptions of the substances they held (Houston and Taube 1987). In this study, through the use of ethnographic and linguistic data, I will investigate a number of the key terms relating to food and drinks found in Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions and offer some insights into their contextual meaning in Classic and Post-classic Maya cultures. In addition, I present a number of new or refined interpretations of food or drink-based terms, some of which point to the unparalleled importance of cacao as an elite commodity, according to the epigraphic record. I will also look at the iconography of foodstuffs as they are depicted in Maya art as a means of better understanding the role of markets and product distribution during the Late Classic period. Finally, I introduce examples of specific titles relating to foodstuffs that appear in the name phrases of Maya elite and attempt to assess and interpret the cultural currency associated with such gastronomic epithets.

Preface List of figures List of tables 1. Introduction Norman Hammond 2. Classic Maya emblem glyphs Peter Mathews 3. Prehistoric polities of the Pasion region: hieroglyphic texts and their archaeological settings Peter Mathews, and Gordon R. Willey 4. An epigraphic history of the western Maya region Linda Schele 5. Cyles of growth at Tikal Christopher Jones 6. Polities in the Northeast Peten, Guatemala T. Patrick Culbert 7. Dynastic historys and cultural evolution at Copan, Honduras William L. Fash, and Davis S. Stuart 8. Diversity and continuity in Maya civilization Robert S. Sharer 9. Elite interaction during the terminal classic period: new evidence from Chichen Itza Linnea H. Wren, and Peter Schmidt 10. Royal visits and other intersite relationships among the classic Maya Linda Schele, and Peter Mathews 11. Inside the black box: defining Maya polity Norman Hammond 12. Maya elite interaction - through a glass, sideways Norman Yoffee 13. Maya political history and elite interaction: a summary view T. Patrick Culbert.

Maya elites and commoners intensively occupied the Itzan escarpment, located in the lower Río de la Pasión drainage system of Petén, Guatemala, during the Preclassic and Protoclassic periods. Itzan was colonized during the Xe phase of the Middle Preclassic period, and its occupation intensified during the late Middle and Late Preclassic periods, when elite residential and ceremonial facilities were erected. During the Late Preclassic and Protoclassic periods, the escarpment was dominated by Chaak Ak'al, a large site distinguished by massive pyramids and lengthy wall-like constructions, which undoubtedly served as a polity capital. Subsequent to the Protoclassic period, the locus of activity atop the escarpment shifted back to Itzan, which served as a polity capital through the Late Classic period. From data collected at Itzan, Chaak Ak'al, and other sites of the lower Río de la Pasión drainage system, a picture of regional Preclassic Maya political geography is emerging.

The ninth century collapse and abandonment of the Central Maya Lowlands in the Yucatán peninsular region were the result of complex human-environment interactions. Large-scale Maya landscape alterations and demands placed on resources and ecosystem services generated high-stress environmental conditions that were amplified by increasing climatic aridity. Coincident with this stress, the flow of commerce shifted from land transit across the peninsula to sea-borne transit around it. These changing socioeconomic and environmental conditions generated increasing societal conflicts, diminished control by the Maya elite, and led to decisions to move elsewhere in the peninsular region rather than incur the high costs of maintaining the human-environment systems in place. After abandonment, the environment of the Central Maya Lowlands largely recovered, although altered from its state before Maya occupation; the population never recovered. This history and the spatial and temporal variability in the pattern of collapse and abandonment throughout the Maya lowlands support the case for different conditions, opportunities, and constraints in the prevailing human-environment systems and the decisions to confront them. The Maya case lends insights for the use of paleo- and historical analogs to inform contemporary global environmental change and sustainability.

Recognition of architectural patterning among groups of structures at lowland Maya sites dating from the Classic period provides insights into the ways that residences and ritual complexes were organized. Each structured group arrangement, or Plaza Plan (PP), reveals an architectural grammar that provides the database enabling us to predict urban as well as rural settlement patterns. Wide variations in sizes among examples of residential PPs suggests that heterarchy was an important aspect of Classic Maya society. Examination of PP2 at Tikal indicates that a heterarchic pattern of organization existed. Heterarchy may relate to the fragility of the structure of lowland Maya kingship, and this may explain the gradual demise of states during the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods and their replacement by re-emergent Maya chiefdoms.

This chapter complements the general survey of geographic preferences and gradual shifts in Classic period head-modeling practices in Mesoamerica by exemplifying their local roles and embedded ideological meanings for the ancient Maya. With its rich legacy of writing, art, and abundance of material vestiges, the data-rich Maya area, the hub of Mesoamerican research, is especially well suited to such an endeavor. More than most other Mesoamerican cultural settings, this study environment (and the host of Mayanist research available today) concedes more nuanced and culturally embedded interpretations. For the purposes of this volume, I will refer to my own systematic cranial survey of 2,000 crania from the Maya area, including 1,200 individuals dated to the Classic period. The latter span 91 Classic period Maya sites from southern and southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras (Tiesler, Transformarse en maya. El modelado cefalico entre los mayas prehispanicos y coloniales, 2012). The documented distribution of head form over the Maya cultural landscape follows some of the Mayan vernacular language divisions during the Classic period and points to their significance as visible emblems of group affiliation. Conversely, the Maya did not revert to head modeling to signify ascribed roles of aristocracy, where the noblesse displayed similar head shapes to those of their commoner underlings. The regional survey is complemented by local glimpses of Maya head-modeling customs. To this end, two large and well-documented skeletal series: are examined. One speaks for the urban neighbors of Classic period Copan, in present-day Honduras; the second case study examines the merchant folk from Xcambo, a small salt production center on the northern shores of Yucatan.

Skeletal health and the abandonment of a late-terminal formative urban center in the Mixteca Alta: A bioarchaeological analysis of human remains from Cerro Jazmín

While most discussions of Maya culture emphasize the central importance of maize agriculture to Maya identity and daily life, interregional trade in natural resources from a huge variety of micro-environments was equally central to the everyday habits of Maya people during the Classic period. The Yucatan peninsula makes up the majority of the landmass where Maya-speaking people lived in the past, and it is defined by an enormous coastline with hundreds of barrier islands and shallow bays. At the base of the peninsula there are river systems that flow from the southern Maya lowlands out to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Goods from the highlands and southern lowlands moved along these rivers, and then in turn up the coastline. Inland farmers, craftspeople, and their rulers relied on coastal trade for daily necessities, not just exotic jewelry and ritual items. Traders frequented coastal settlements, which were some of the most diverse and interesting places in the Classic period, where people from throughout the Maya world and beyond met and exchanged ideas as well as goods. These ports of trade emphasized economic exchange over dynastic lineage as a means to acquire influence and power, although some ports were controlled by large inland dynastic cities and certain commodities seem to have moved in and out of trade centers based on political alliances crafted or destroyed by the elite. The daily activities of those who lived near the sea were different from those of Maya people who lived at inland centers, and full- and part-time traders held positions of great influence in Maya society. In addition to economic activity, coastal settlements were often places of spiritual significance, even pilgrimage, as they embodied Maya conceptualizations of the sea as a boundary place between one world and another. Scenes from Classic mythology show supernatural creatures traveling to the underworld on a carved wooden canoe – and perhaps in part for its ability to provide not only subsistence but also rare materials, the sea was understood as a metaphor for the primordial place of origin, a realm where deities and potent spirits resided (Figure 6.1).

The rich data from elite households at the Classic Maya site of Aguateca indicate that each household was a relatively autonomous economic unit of production and consumption of staples and utilitarian goods. While individual households were also specializing in the production of a variety of prestige items, there is little evidence for central control of any sphere of the economy by the royal court or elites. Individual households also seem to have maintained their own long-distance relationships with other elites from different areas. One intriguing question is why Maya elites, in apparent contrast to elites of complex societies in other parts of the world, did not seem to have developed and used a centralized economy as a means of power and political control. The unique data from Aguateca elite households contributes to a better understanding of Classic Maya economic organization.

Maya Ruins Revisited: In the Footsteps of Teobert Maler highlights the visual record of an often-overlooked pioneer of Maya studies, the German photographer and Mayanist Teobert Maler. Maler's contributions, overshadowed by earlier Western explorers of Maya sites such as John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, Alfred Maudslay, and Désiré Charnay, receive their due in Maya Ruins Revisited. Undertaken with a photographer's eye for detail, William Frej visually illustrates the importance of Maler's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographs of cities that had been untouched for centuries. These photographs, often paired with Frej's images taken a century or more later, show over 70 Maya sites upon their rediscovery, before decades of looting or restoration altered them beyond recognition. This excellent collection of photographs and essays will delight scholars, students, and Maya enthusiasts alike.Introductory essays, most of them succinct, situate the photographs and captions within the developing field of photography, surveys of Maya sites, and advances in Mayanist scholarship from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century. Essays by Alma Durán-Merk and Stephan Merk, Tomás Gallareta Negrón, Jeremy A. Sabloff, and Khristaan D. Villela contextualize the high-quality images with a biography of Maler, a brief sketch of Frej's career, and an overview of the Maya urban life of the Classic and Postclassic periods; Frej provides an introduction as photographer. Sabloff's concise survey of Maya urbanism across several millennia distills a leading Mayanist's knowledge into ten approachable pages, accessible to nonspecialists. Its up-to-date interpretations provide a framework for the Maya architecture in Frej's photographs. Merk and Durán-Merk open a window on the somewhat reclusive figure whose photography gave many in the world their first glimpse of many Maya sites off the beaten path. The coauthors of this chapter piece together the globe-trotting life of the German photographer and former officer in Maximilian's army and his wide-ranging travels throughout the Maya world. Using source materials such Maler's papers and memoirs, Merk and Durán-Merk re-create the adventures of Maler far from his birthplace in Rome. Though Frej has lived a less sensational life, his contributions to the field of Maya studies are no less impressive, as Villela details. Finally, a “further reading” section on page 288 offers a brief list of additional sources for readers wishing to learn more.However, most of the pages are filled with Frej's high-quality photographs of Maya sites, from the best-known and most visited Maya cities such as Chichén Itzá, Tikal, and Uxmal to remote locations only accessible by dirt trails or by boat, such as Dzibiltun in Yucatan and Topoxte in Petén. In many instances, Frej paired his recent photographs with Maler's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century images of the same site, often taken from the same or a similar angle. These pairings give readers a visual guide to the looting, decay, extensive restoration, and changes to the landscapes that have occurred between when Maler captured the state of the sites in the late nineteenth century and when Frej revisited them in the early twenty-first century. Even when Maler's photographs are not included for comparison, Frej's captions describe the erosion of facades, restorations of nonoriginal materials, and disappearing plaster and pigment.Maler's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photos contrasted with more recent images by Frej show changes to not only structures but also the surroundings. Maler's photos often contain Maya subjects in the foreground or maize fields cultivated near the sites, showing that while Maler may have been the first European to view the remains of major cities, Maya continued to live in the shadows of the lands of their ancestors. While these aspects of the photographic essay will benefit archaeologists and other Mayanists, even the casual reader will come away from reading Maya Ruins Revisited with a deeper appreciation of Maya art and architecture.Frej's diligence in compiling this outstanding book is commendable. By bringing together scholars from Germany, Mexico, and the United States to write concise introductory material, Frej has made this work accessible to readers from all levels of expertise in the Maya world. The final product is impressive, valuable, and informative and should be purchased by any Maya enthusiast or librarian who can afford to do so.

Applying new approaches to modeling diet and status: isotopic evidence for commoner resiliency and elite variability in the Classic Maya lowlands

The intellectual, artistic, and architectural accomplishments of Maya elites during the Classic period were extraordinary, and evidence of elite activities has preserved well in the archaeological record. A centuries-long research focus on elites has understandably fostered the view that they controlled the economy, politics, and religion of Maya civilization. While there has been significant progress in household archaeology, unfortunately the activities, decisions, and interactions of commoners generally preserve poorly in the archaeological record. Therefore, it has been challenging to understand the sociopolitical economy of commoners, and how it related—or did not relate—to elite authority. The exceptional volcanic preservation of the site of Cerén, El Salvador, provides a unique opportunity to explore the degree to which elites controlled or influenced commoner life. Was society organized in a top-down hierarchy in which elites controlled everything? Or did commoners have autonomy, and thus the authority to decide quotidian, seasonal, and annual issues within the village? Or was there a mixture of different loci of authority within the village and the region? Research at Cerén is beginning to shed some light on the sociopolitical economy within the community and in relation to elites in the Zapotitan valley. A domain in which there was considerable commoner-elite interaction in the Cerén area was the marketplace. Elites and their attached specialists provided products, and commoners decided which marketplace they would attend to exchange their items. Evidence from Cerén also suggests that there were numerous other domains of authority within the community that had no detectable control or influence from outside. For instance, people in the village decided what crafts or specialized agricultural products to produce as surplus to be exchanged within the community for different products from other households. Cerén community members acted independently as individuals, as households, or in other domains within the community. Understanding the multiple layers of authority at Cerén sheds light on the sociopolitical organization in one non-elite Classic period Maya community.