Looking at the Ancient Maya from the Outside

Summary

I owe Vern Scarborough a great debt for the opportunity to look into the dynamics of Maya research in the context of the IHOPE Maya project. As a historian and prehistoric archaeologist, I have been struck by the way in which, in the research, two perspectives were commingled: the prehistorian's perspective looking (back) towards the origins of the heyday of (Classic) Maya culture and the historian's perspective looking (forward) for the emergence of certain elements of it. It seems to me that unraveling these two perspectives might result in some more clarity. In particular, we have the choice between (a) looking for the (singular!) origins of the Maya sphere as a whole, and (b) reconstructing how (a number of) different societies in different parts of the Guatemalan highlands and the Yucatan emerge and grow into one cultural sphere. Do we look back from the present to the past or do we look forward from the past to the present and the future? In view of the data at our disposal both are necessary, but need to be distinguished. The paper will look at this from the perspective of water management and its relationship to social organization.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• The Contributions of Vernon Scarborough in Water Management and Sustainability, Part 1: Global and Comparative

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Spatial Coverage