Coloniality in the Maya lowlands brings together a collection of contributions emphasising later periods in Maya history. The division of the book into three parts appears mostly to be chronological, but timeframes overlap between sections. Most chapters focus on settlements, features and topics in archaeology and ethnohistory of the Caste War period (1847 to c. 1901). Exceptions include Chapter 2, on the town of Tahcabo with a history as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth century (but continuing later), Chapter 3's discussion of Afro-Yucatecan settlements of the 1700s and early 1800s, Chapter 4's analysis of piracy and defensive strategies in the 1700s on the east coast and Chapter 10's concerns with cultural heritage.
Chapter 1 by editors Kasey Diserens Morgan and Tiffany Fryer raises useful points about the importance of later period Maya historical archaeology, a matter long acknowledged with the USA and Mexico. I was surprised by the indignant (and at times, accusatory) tone of Chapter 1 and the authors’ exaggerated claim of how little work has been done. This is perhaps due to their emphasis on citing sources published only since 2000 and few references to works written by scholars native to the host countries. Was it necessary to state that Maya historical archaeology publications are ‘one-off’ efforts ‘tacked on obligatorily’ by investigators working in earlier periods? The term ‘coloniality’ is not well explained in the Introduction, especially its links to the concepts of ambivalence and hybridity in current postcolonial approaches.
The strength of this volume lies in the interesting case-study chapters offered by the contributors. Household economy and social organisation are considered in the context of changing political economies by Maia Dedrick, Patricia McAnany and Iván Batún Alpuche for Tahcabo (Chapter 2), with data brought to bear on resource availability, inequities and strategies for resilience or survival. Julie Wesp's review (Chapter 3) of Afro-Yucatecan archaeological research in the northern peninsula reminds us of findings from a cemetery in Campeche, and she describes important research at two free black settlements of the 1700s at San Fernando de Aké and San Francisco de Paula. García Lara and Olán de la Cruz (Chapter 4) examine the role of trinchera (stone barricade) fortifications for combating pirate raids and/or for controlling illicit trade, centered on finds at the inland site of Tela’. These authors shed light on crucial commercial exchanges between inland towns and coastal merchants, vendors or pirates.
From surface features in the Tihosuco/Tela’ study area, Fryer (Chapter 5) addresses the violence of the Caste War from a historical perspective. She describes how residential boundary walls were transformed into fortifications and identifies types of evidence for the rapid abandonment of houselots. Fortifications are further studied in Chapter 6 by Alejandra Badillo Sánchez with respect to federal campaigns late in the Caste War along multiple lines of conflict. She discusses how troops and features restricted movement, intimidated Maya peoples, hindered subsistence efforts and triggered flight.
The divergent strategies of newly founded refugee communities (San Pedro Maya) in western Belize during the second half of the 1800s are addressed by Brett Houk, Brooke Bonorden and Gertrude Kilgore (Chapter 7). Three towns variably adhered to more traditional material lifeways or forged amalgamated economic strategies of old and new materials and opportunities within complex and changing local political pressures and opportunities. Similarly, James Meierhoff (Chapter 8) considers a mid-1800s refugee settlement at Tikal, Guatemala, which, while isolated, strove to engage in market trade. Although it was likely a multiethnic settlement, the Tikal dwellings had Maya-style stone hearths and incense burners.
In Chapter 9, John Gust compares labour experiences during the Caste War at three sites, one whose residents worked for the logging industry (and rented land from a British company in Belize) and two hacienda sites engaged in sugar and rum production (north-east Quintana Roo). The former had more leeway to negotiate their terms, while the latter two sites constrained Indigenous workers via debt peonage; archaeological data reveal their comparatively pronounced levels of poverty. Local experiences related to sugar (and chicle and rum) production in north-east Yucatan are further considered by Jennifer Matthews, John Gust and Scott Fedick (Chapter 10) via ethnographic interviews, historical sources and analogies to modern and historical production localities.
Diserens Morgan (Chapter 11) discusses issues of cultural resource preservation and the importance of centring local stakeholder goals and narratives in that process, criticising some of the efforts made by Mexican government agencies and tourism development. With Tihosuco as a case study, she describes preservation policies emphasising a single time-period as rendering architectural features as ‘living dead’ monuments. This chapter levels harsh, broad-brush denunciations of existing programmes ranging from house museums (in general) to the myriad of preservation and cultural heritage efforts conducted by Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. This chapter offers a position statement of a foreign scholar that might have acknowledged the often disparate views held by local stakeholders in rural peninsular towns, some of whom welcome employment opportunities accompanying development of sites for tourism and education.
A reflection on the book's themes by Rosemary Joyce in Chapter 12 draws on her work in Honduras in terms of survivance, or the reproduction and retention of historical memory and tradition through daily practice. She highlights that even marginalised places exercised choices and the importance of studying community-based variation. Joyce advocates for continued broadening of research frames to include women and diverse ethnicities in places like historical Yucatan. Ethnographer Fernando Armstrong-Fumero (Chapter 13) discusses the contributor's findings in terms of questions of ethnicity and authenticity, maize agriculture's changing history, key political-geographical shifts and the impacts of Caste War migrations.
The book has production errors that should have been caught by the press. Some maps are poorly reproduced and tiny fonts plague many figures. One figure caption (8.1) includes several lines of chapter text and some publication dates are missing in references.
Overall, this is an interesting book about historical archaeology in the Yucatan peninsula, mostly eastern Yucatan. The archaeological case studies in many of the book's chapters will stand as key sources consulted by scholars planning research in later periods of history in the region. The book offers compelling reasons to undertake such work, ranging from the comparative need to understand more diverse perspectives from communities and different ethnicities to the real potential to link archaeological investigations to living descendants by focusing on the more recent past.
