Maya Political Science: Time, Astronomy, and the Cosmos

Acknowledgments

acknowledgments This monograph had its origins in about 1995 as an effort to synthesize data on the Late and Terminal Classic monuments of the Petén lakes area of Guatemala. I first presented my tentative thoughts about the role of may cycles in the Tikal region at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco in 1996, in a paper prepared with skeptical coauthors, Don S. Rice and Grant D. Jones. About three years later, I sent out an intermediate but still preliminary articlelength version of these ideas to colleagues, and I am grateful to Will Andrews , Arthur Demarest, David Freidel, Norman Hammond, Joyce Marcus , and David Webster for their helpful suggestions and encouragement to pursue this line of reasoning. In the course of finalizing this manuscript , numerous other individuals shared useful data with me, including Tony Andrews, Clemency Coggins, and Kitty Emery. I am especially grateful to Bill Fash, Joyce Marcus, John Montgomery, and David Stuart for generously providing me with copies of illustrations to be reprinted in this book. I find myself particularly indebted to my Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC), departmental colleague C. Andrew Hofling. Andy was extremely generous in sharing his Maya linguistic and epigraphic expertise, gently but insistently nudging me to dig deeper for substantiating data and suffering my contrarian presence in his Maya hieroglyphs class. He also arranged, through the kind generosity of Martha Macri, to whom I am extremely grateful, to make a copy of her Maya hieroglyphic database available to me and students working with me. Andy’s heroism extended to reading the entire manuscript not once but twice! Without Andy’s encouragement and support, this book would not have been written . (I quickly add that any errors are entirely my own responsibility.) I am also extremely grateful to Don Rice for his critiques, insights, and suggestions for clarification. In addition, I was privileged to count on his computer expertise—and patience through many dreary winter weekends—for many of the illustrations. Our four-footed “children”— Duner, Pee, Boz, and the late, great Yum Oliver—provided much-needed fuzz therapy 24/7. This project began as a matter of organizing background data for the continuing archaeological and historical research project, which I codirected with Don Rice and Grant Jones, funded by the National Science Foundation (grants DBS-9222373, SBR-9515443). Field research was carried out under permit from the Instituto de Antropología e Historia of Guatemala, and I appreciate their official support for the project. I especially acknowledge the codirectors of this project, Don S. Rice, for his encouragement and assistance, and José Rómulo Sánchez Polo, our Guatemalan field director, for his diplomacy and skills in making sure the project continued on course from year to year. Much of this book was written during a half-time sabbatical from my administrative duties, and I am grateful to John Koropchak and SUIC for providing me with this essential research leave. Last but most certainly not least, I thank an absolutely terrific group of current and former graduate students at SIUC, particularly (in the case of this text) Tim Pugh and Phil Wanyerka, as well as undergraduates Bethany Myers and Amber Napton, all of whom, through seminars, field seasons, and frequent conversations, provided important insights that forced me to sharpen my thinking. I say again: any errors that appear are, of course, entirely my own responsibility. xxii maya political science maya political science THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK ...