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"Using the most up to date information from a variety of disciplines, Ardren uses stories of individual Maya people, to create a narrative that takes the reader from rural homestead to agricultural field and forest, and on to the marketplace, palace, and trading port of a royal Maya city"--

Everyday Life in the Classic Maya World introduces readers to a range of people who lived during the Classic period (200-800 CE) of Maya civilization. Traci Ardren here reconstructs the individual experiences of Maya people across all social arenas and experiences, including less-studied populations, such as elders, children, and non-gender binary people. Putting people, rather than objects, at the heart of her narrative, she examines the daily activities of a small rural household of farmers and artists, hunting and bee-keeping rituals, and the bustling activities of the urban marketplace. Ardren bases her study on up-to-date and diverse sources and approaches, including archaeology, art history, epigraphy, and ethnography. Her volume reveals the stories of ancient Maya people and also shows the relevance of those stories today. Written in an engaging style, Everyday Life in the Classic Maya World offers readers at all levels a view into the amazing accomplishments of a culture that continues to fascinate.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1. Social Imaginaries and the Construction of Classic Maya Identities -- Chapter 2. Circulations and the Urban Imaginary of Chunchucmil -- Chapter 3. Memory, Reinvention, and the Social Imaginary of Later Yaxuna -- Chapter 4. Burial Rituals and the Social Imaginary of Childhood -- Chapter 5. Gendered Imaginaries and Architectural Space -- Chapter 6. Why Social Identities? -- References Cited -- Index

The Archaeology of Childhood: Children, Gender, and Material Culture. Jane Eva Baxter. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2005. 142 pp.

Manifesting Power: Gender and the Interpretation of Power in Archaeology. Tracy L. Sweety. ed. New York: Routledge, 1999.210 pp.

"Gendered Labor in Specialized Economies combine the study of gender in the archaeological record with the examination of intensified craft production in prehistory to reassess the connection between craft specialization and the types and amount of work that men and women performed in ancient communities"--Provided by publisher

This volume illuminates human lifeways in the northern Maya lowlands prior to the rise of Chichén Itzá. This period and area have been poorly understood on their own terms, obscured by scholarly focus on the central lowland Maya kingdoms. "Before Kukulkán" is anchored in three decades of interdisciplinary research at the Classic Maya capital of Yaxuná, located at a contentious crossroads of the northern Maya lowlands.

Using bioarchaeology, mortuary archaeology, and culturally sensitive mainstream archaeology, the authors create an in-depth regional understanding while also laying out broader ways of learning about the Maya past. Part 1 examines ancient lifeways among the Maya at Yaxuná, while part 2 explores different meanings of dying and cycling at the settlement and beyond: ancestral practices, royal entombment and desecration, and human sacrifice. The authors close with a discussion of the last years of occupation at Yaxuná and the role of Chichén Itzá in the abandonment of this urban center.

"Before Kukulkán" provides a cohesive synthesis of the evolving roles and collective identities of locals and foreigners at the settlement and their involvement in the region's trajectory. Theoretically informed and contextualized discussions offer unique glimpses of everyday life and death in the socially fluid Maya city. These findings, in conjunction with other documented series of skeletal remains from this region, provide a nuanced picture of the social and biocultural dynamics that operated successfully for centuries before the arrival of the Itzá.