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Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Praise (bordering on obsession) for The Ancient Maya, Sixth Edition

The other day I purchased the sixth edition of The Ancient Maya, a book that can only be described as “The Bible” of the field. The fifth edition came out 12 years ago, which is an eternity in the world of Mesoamerican scholarship. Comprehensive books such as this one can be compared to computers. When you buy it you think you have the latest and greatest only to learn that a few weeks later it’s obsolete. With computers that’s a bad thing. With books, it’s a mixed blessing: on the one hand you can almost see your $25 investment depreciating cent by cent over the years as new and exciting evidence comes to light and old theories are discarded in favor of more informed ones.

The Ancient Maya was first published in 1946, having been written by the great Sylvanus G. Morley. His goal was to bring together the mountains of information and ideas about the Maya that were scattered throughout the discipline. His motivation was something pure and real; something that you can still find in the pages of the latest edition 60 years later. It turned out to be the first comprehensive book on the ancient Maya and is still one of the few good ones out there today.

I first bought the 1994 edition, written by Robert Sharer of U Penn, a few weeks before I was to travel to Belize for my first extensive archaeological experience with a UNC-Wilmington field school. It came recommended by my mentor at the time as the book on all things Maya. Indeed, when I received it in the mail (I got that one from Amazon.com too) and began leafing through it I found that this was going to be a well-traveled book. Despite being almost 1,000 pages and a little over three pounds I hauled it to Belize with me because I knew I would use it. I ended up referring to it quite a bit. From information about the roots of Maya civilization, to their writing and monumental architecture, it soon showed the battle wounds that come along with spending a month in the humid and dirty conditions of a one-month field school. The fact that a handful of my friends wanted to borrow it from time to time didn’t help the book’s appearance. It eventually became a staple in my growing library, every once in a while coming off the shelf to remind me of when agriculture arrived in Mesoamerica or what a certain inscription tells us about Maya religion.

Late last year I received a nice, glossy postcard in the mail from Stanford University Press letting me know that the sixth edition was on its way. SUP was preaching to the choir because I would have found out eventually and didn’t need to be asked to buy it! The first half of the new edition is almost completely revised due to the extraordinary amount of research that Mesoamerica has produced in the 12 intervening years. The preface mentions the effect many of these discoveries had on the text. It was a huge undertaking as suggested by the fact that Sharer’s wife, Loa P. Traxler, is listed as a co-author. Either Sharer got lazy or simply couldn’t keep up with all the working going on. I prefer to believe it was because of the latter. The Ancient Maya was and still is the book to have if you’re a Mesoamerican archaeologist. I have yet to see such a comprehensive and well-written treatment of the Maya or any ancient civilization for that matter. For $25, you can’t go wrong.

Posted by Will at February 8, 2006 10:00 PM in Anthropology | Maya Archaeology | Personal Reflections