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Ethnohistory 49.4 (2002) 898-900



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Place of the Lord's Daughter: Rab'inal, its history, its dance-drama. By Ruud van Akkeren. (Leiden: Research School CNWS, 2000. 555 pp., introduction, maps, plans, illustrations, tables, appendix, bibliography. $40.00 paper.)

Ruud van Akkeren makes a significant contribution to the field of Mayan studies with his book Place of the Lord's Daughter: Rab'inal, its history, its dance-drama. Van Akkeren successfully employs an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Rab'inal, its Mayan inhabitants, and their dance performance. In the process he unravels the relations between different Mayan language groups and, more important, lineages, in Guatemala's highlands during the Postclassic period (a.d. 900–1530). Van Akkeren convincingly argues that following the development and migrations of lineages provides a clearer picture of the Postclassic period than examining the larger language polities. He achieves his two main goals of interpreting the dance-drama text known as the Rab'inal Achi and contributing to the historical understanding of the region. However, van Akkeren is more convincing in the former than the latter. As van Akkeren readily admits, he bases much of his historical reconstruction on extrapolation. This shortcoming, however, is not for a lack of primary research (archival and oral), examination of extant indigenous documents, or a thorough command of the secondary literature.

The author incorporates archaeology, ethnohistory, iconography, geography, and linguistics in his exhaustive study of Rab'inal. He relies most heavily on Kaqchikel and K'ichee' documents and refreshingly employs oral traditions to reveal and support new evidence. Van Akkeren critically analyzes what he terms the "mytho-historiography" in the indigenous [End Page 898] sources and structuring of oral traditions. He asserts that the Maya wrote and continue to narrate their history as it should have happened, not necessarily as it did happen. Nonetheless, he is able to discern valuable historical data from these sources that oftentimes collapse time, rearrange events, or aggrandize personages or lineages. Van Akkeren points out that oral traditions and "ethnographic data display a strong continuity with the past" (310). He demonstrates that Rab'inal played an important role in the transition from Classic lowland Maya to Postclassic highland Maya of Guatemala. His data and analysis points to more complex migration and settlement patterns than previously discerned. Mayan highlanders came from various geographic origins and arrived at distinct times. In addition to the Chontal-Nahua speakers who migrated to the highlands after the fall of Chichén Itzá around 1250, some groups migrated from the Pacific Coast; still others were already present in the area but their identity was subsumed in what became known as the K'ichee' alliance. In this study, Rab'inal emerges as a pivotal geographic, cultural, political, and economic center in Guatemala's Postclassic period.

The Rab'inal Achi text proves to be a valuable source of historical and cultural information. It is unique from other Mayan texts, such as the Popol Wuj or Memorial de Sololá, in its "absolute absence of Spanish influence" (479). That characteristic alone leads to invaluable insight into Mayan worldviews. Van Akkeren surmises that the authors are from the Toj lineage, a group that arrived from the Pacific Coast and controlled much of the area in and around Rab'inal before K'iq'ab's K'ichee' alliance asserted its political domination in the mid–fifteenth century. He argues that the Rab'inal Achi is part of a larger tradition in Mesoamerica, which he terms the Shield Dance. Van Akkeren claims that the Shield Dance was the most important festival in Postclassic highland Guatemala, as it was celebrated to denote great events at the end of the thirteen-year cycle and more lavishly at the end of the fifty-two-year cycle, or Mesoamerican century. The recognition of the Shield Dance is a potentially important contribution to decoding the dating system in indigenous sources; however, the Maya used a twenty-year katun cycle, not the thirteen-year cycle. Van Akkeren recognizes that his failure to reconcile these distinct units of time leaves...

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