Faces of Rulership in the Maya Region

Authority—whether royal, divine, material, fleeting, or enduring—varied across space and time in the Maya region, from its Preclassic dynastic origins through the colonial encounters of the sixteenth century. The changing faces of Maya rulership and their foundational ties to symbolic material objects, architecture, ancestral beings, deities, and written monuments are fully explored in the fifteen chapters of Faces of Rulership in the Maya Region. The contributors track rulership—beyond the prevalent paradigm of divine kingship—by considering the power of queens and unravelling codes embedded in art and public buildings. Through the close study of the agency of rulers who often sought to distinguish themselves from other dynasts, the contributors come to an enhanced understanding of the relational dynamics between rulers and… Keep Reading