Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya, vol. 2: Data and Case Studies (review)

Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya, volume 2, builds admirably upon its predecessor and with it forms an invaluable resource for scholars seeking to understand the political organization of Prehispanic Maya society. The authors in this volume take the concept of the Maya court as introduced in volume 1 and explore the full range of archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic evidence to reconstruct political life in the many iterations of Maya society.

In volume 2 we are offered Data and Case Studies. Chapters focusing on the details of archaeological data are undeniably drier than the more synthetic chapters in volume 1, but this is not really a bad thing. Such data are needed to show that the archaeologist has access to the data required to shed light on the Maya court. It is important, however, to differentiate the audiences for these two volumes. Whereas volume 1 is accessible to the expert, the dedicated student, or the enthusiast, volume 2 is much more for researchers, advanced students, and other similarly dedicated readers.

Each of the chapters in this book offers important insights into the nature of the Maya court and the ability of the archaeologist to recover the evidence for these courts. But as with all edited volumes, the chapters are not uniformly satisfying. Although each builds on a foundation that assumes the existence of a royal court, some do a better job than others of developing their concepts of what exactly the court was, how the court functioned, how courtiers acted, and what the archaeological evidence for all of this should be.

John Clark and Richard Hansen's study of the architecture of early kingship, for instance, is a fascinating and important piece that traces out the early development of monumental architecture across Mesoamerica. However, the authors assume the political constructions that go with the physical buildings. It is probably unfair to slight the authors in this regard, for they note on the first page of their chapter that space constraints do not allow for a full discussion of the social performances that impinge on their arguments. Yet their chapter would have been more illuminating had Clark and Hansen—like Loa Traxler (for Copán), Peter Harrison (for Tikal), Juan Antonio Valdés (for Uaxactún), and Mary Miller (for Bonampak)—done a more effective job of making clear the performances for which they find evidence in the architecture and artifacts.

The chapters in this book are also commendable in forcing the reader to reconsider some underlying assumptions about central places and royal courts in the Maya area. Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase provide a fascinating overview of political life at Caracol and extend the court away from the site core. Using artifacts, architecture, and bone chemistry analyses, they present an intriguing model for the royal court that sees courtiers tied not only to the central place but involved as well with social and architectural structures at all levels of society. Similarly Joseph W. Ball and Jennifer T. Taschek's study of Cahal Pech and Buena Vista del Cayo presents us with a mobile court, whose seasonal peregrinations require multiple architectural settings.

The application of ethnographic and ethnohistoric sources to archaeological data has always been a bit of a stumbling block for archaeologists, and the chapters in this volume that do incorporate such data vary in their success. I found William J. Folan, Joel D. Gunn, and MarÌa del Rosario DomÌnguez Carrasco's application of Caste War–era social organization to Classic period data particularly problematic. The other chapters in this and the first volume provide no evidence for the existence of the triadic political organization suggested by Folan and colleagues for the court of Calakmul. William M. Ringle and George J. Bey III (in the Puuc region of Yucat&aacute...