Regimes of the Ancient Maya

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Regimes of the Ancient Maya" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this symposium and its accompanying forum, we seek to open the black box of “the ancient Maya polity” by investigating diverse expressions of Maya political organization. In the study of ancient Maya political organization, the traditional and homogenizing concept of the Maya polity is largely ahistorical and ideological, reflecting primarily a bounded political unit recognized from within and without. We argue that the concept of regimes is better suited for studying how ancient Maya communities constructed, distributed, and legitimated political power. By investigating many variable yet coherent political practices, we seek to better understand the mosaic of “political communities” that characterized the ancient Maya world at distinct times in its long history. Our dual “Regimes” symposium and forum assemble scholars working across most of the Maya world and studying periods ranging from the Early Classic to the Late Postclassic.