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Ethnohistory 49.2 (2002) 456-458



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Book Review

In the Realm of Nachan Kan:
Postclassic Maya Archaeology at Laguna de On, Belize


In the Realm of Nachan Kan: Postclassic Maya Archaeology at Laguna de On, Belize. By Marilyn A. Masson. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2000. 280 pp., preface, introduction, maps, bibliography, index. $65.00 cloth.)

Postclassic Maya society in the Yucatán peninsula used to be seen as an impoverished one that followed the collapse of the glorious Classic predecessor. This view was gradually revised during the 1970s and 1980s through the efforts of various scholars, including Anthony Andrews, Arlen and Diane Chase, David Freidel, David Pendergast, William Rathje, Don and Prudence Rice, Fernando Robles, and Jeremy Sabloff. Their research has demonstrated that the Postclassic lowland Maya developed a thriving society with energetic economic activities, social dynamism, and organization different from the ones during the Classic period. These scholars also have shown that archaeology can make unique contributions to the study of Postclassic society beyond the confirmation of events and institutions described in ethnohistorical documents. In her book In the Realm of Nachan Kan, Marilyn Masson follows these trends and further expands our understanding of the Postclassic lowland Maya through the results of her archaeological investigations at Laguna de On, Belize.

In chapters 1–4, Masson presents general backgrounds to Laguna de On and Postclassic archaeology, a discussion of ceramic chronology, and the general results of excavations. The core of her argument is found in chapter 5, in which she examines economic production and exchange at [End Page 456] Laguna de On. She analyzes a broad range of artifact categories, including ground stones, faunal remains, worked sherds, chipped stone artifacts, spindle whorls, ceramics, and shell artifacts. In the current trend of archaeology, in which many researchers prefer to stay in the comfortable domains of their narrow specialization, Masson's control of a broad range of data is admirable. She demonstrates that such synthetic analysis reveals important patterns in social and economic organization, which cannot be reached through the study of single artifact categories alone. Her analysis shows a stable pattern of economic growth in this small community, which, though located in a rather marginal area, actively participated in wide networks of trade. She also points out that interhousehold inequality increased in the latter part of the Postclassic period.

Chapter 6 explores religious institutions and elite power, which constitute another important part of Masson's argument. Here she turns to other centers with richer iconographic remains, particularly Mayapán, Tulum, and Santa Rita. Although this gives an impression that the chapter is not well integrated with the rest of the book, her specific arguments are quite compelling. She reevaluates the earlier rather simplistic characterization of Postclassic society as one with secular elite power and religious practices focused on the household domain. She convincingly argues that, while Postclassic leadership was quite different from the divine rulership of the preceding period, political power was still deeply rooted in elite-sponsored religious activities at community centers and ancestor worship programmed by elites. She also notes the important trend of religious revival in the Late Postclassic times, marked by the reuses of certain religious symbols and deities from the Classic period and the resurgence of stela erection.

Her concluding argument in chapter 7, however, is somewhat frustrating. Instead of developing a fresh vision of the Postclassic period, much of the concluding chapter simply repeats or confirms the models from the 1960s and 1970s with some additions of newer theoretical terms and concepts. Important new dimensions of Postclassic society hinted at in the preceding chapters are collapsed into the labels of a secondary state or a "mature" society. Although the characterization of Postclassic society as a mature one appears to be a primary theme of the book, I do not see any logical reasoning for this label other than an implicit ethnocentrism that societies similar to modern Western ones in some aspects should be characterized as mature. Further theoretical discussion of the implications of increasing inequality in the latter...

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