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Language revitalization efforts have been critiqued for creating and reproducing linguistic, epistemological, and pedagogical hierarchies that might run counter to a community's needs and interests. Drawing on a seven-year ethnographic and collaborative research with the Maya cultural promoters of the Caste War Museum in Tihosuco, Mexico, we describe the dynamics of our Maya language reclamation partnership focusing on the creation of bilingual comic books and summer workshops for children. These experiences show a slow but steady language reclamation approach based on the concern for younger generations to feel comfortable to claim their right to speak and learn Maya and on their fondness for Maya language and culture. We argue that the construction, negotiation, and assertion of linguistic and pedagogical authority among all participating actors is central to reclamation projects, and that these processes are impacted by outsider researchers-collaborators in ways that can support but also potentially harm these language efforts. This paper sheds light on the various tensions lived in long-term language reclamation projects, recognizing the need for outsider researchers to turn our reflexive gaze inwards and consider how we can bring to the fore practices we can celebrate as well as address and transform those that cause discomfort and uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the beginning of the 1580s, some Maya caciques of Yucatan sent to King Philip II a letter asking him the future bishop of the province to be Franciscan and a group of religious from the same Order to be sent to the peninsula in order to consolidate the evangelization of Native people. The letter was written in Yucatec maya and was translated into Castilian by the interpreter Juan Ruiz de la Vega. The record, which remains unpublished until today, completes the restricted corpus of sixteenth century texts written in Yucatec maya and, for that same reason, it has an exceptional historical value. The present article offers a linguistic and philological analysis of both the maya text and its translation. It aims at highlighting that the term "maya" was used in the letter to emphasize the native linguistic and cultural identity. We also demonstrate that the interpreter intended to minimize the expression of this revendication in its translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paleoclimatic evidence indicating a series of droughts in the Yucatan Peninsula during the Terminal Classic period suggests that climate change may have contributed to the disruption or collapse of Classic Maya polities. Although climate change cannot fully account for the multifaceted, political turmoil of the period, it is clear that droughts of strong magnitude could have limited food availability, potentially causing famine, migration, and societal decline. Maize was undoubtedly an important staple food of the ancient Maya, but a complete analysis of other food resources that would have been available during drought remains unresolved. Here, we assess drought resistance of all 497 indigenous food plant species documented in ethnographic, ethnobotanical, and botanical studies as having been used by the lowland Maya and classify the availability of these plant species and their edible components under various drought scenarios. Our analysis indicates availability of 83% of food plant species in short-term drought, but this percentage drops to 22% of food plant species available in moderate drought up to 1 y. During extreme drought, lasting several years, our analysis indicates availability of 11% of food plant species. Our results demonstrate a greater diversity of food sources beyond maize that would have been available to the Maya during climate disruption of the Terminal Classic period than has been previously acknowledged. While drought would have necessitated shifts in dietary patterns, the range of physiological drought responses for the available food plants would have allowed a continuing food supply under all but the most dire conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compared seasonal changes in food availability between Maya subsistence farmers and modern householders who pursue cash earnings in rural Yucatan. Modern households encourage the substitution of vegetable for animal protein that severely affects them during scarcity season, particularly in small towns. Subsistence households have increased their legume intake when food was scarce. Seasonality had the largest effect on fruit availability. Unable to obtain enough protein and micronutrient rich foods when meats, fruits and vegetables become scarce, modern households make up for it by purchasing more fats and sugars, particularly in large towns with many grocery stores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the indigenous population in Mexico increased their access to higher education. From an analytical perspective on social inequalities, this article approaches the educational trajectories of Maya or Mayan origin youths who have accessed at the university in Yucatan. It shows how a restricted access to the structure of opportunities based on social origin and a precarious school environment translates into the perpetuation of educational disadvantageous conditions up to the university level. However, it is also identified that in these environments, the interaction with social agents is a key factor in favoring a change of direction towards more favorable educational contexts. It also identifies a privileged sector of young people from families who have experienced processes of social mobility, that makes their educational trajectories a more stable path with less obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maya blue is a pigment found in different archaeological sites of different cultures from Mesoamerica, and also in colonial buildings in Mexico and Cuba. The pigment is made from a thermally treated mixture of indigo and palygorskite. Pigment samples from Aztec and non‐Aztec archaeological sites as well as reference Yucatecan palygorskites were studied in this paper to assess their differences. The characterization of the samples was carried out by a combination of a crystal–chemical‐point analyses using electron microscopy to obtain the structural formulae of the palygorskite crystals, and studied using high‐resolution X‐ray diffraction. The data show evidence that the palygorskite used by non‐Aztec cultures, such as the Maya, is compatible with palygorskite from known sources in the Yucatan Peninsula, while the palygorskite used by the Aztec culture is different in its structure and has an origin that is still unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the influence of grandmothers' household residency on the presence of low height-for-age and excessive fat (FMI = fat mass [kg]/height [m2]), waist circumference, and sum of triceps and subscapular skinfolds in a sample of 247 6- to 8-year-old urban Maya children from Yucatan, Mexico. Between September 2011 and January 2014, we obtained anthropometric and body composition data from children and mothers, as well as socioeconomic characteristics of participants and households. Grandmothers' place of residence was categorized as either in the same household as their grandchildren (n = 71) or in separate households (n = 176). Multiple logistic regression models were used to analyze the association between grandmothers' residency and outcome variables. Models were adjusted for maternal anthropometric characteristics and the following socioeconomic variables: family size, location, maternal education, monthly family income, and household crowding. Models showed that the presence of grandmothers in their grandchildren's households was not associated with any of the outcome variables. In contrast, larger family size, overcrowding in the household, and lower family income predicted low height-for-age in children. Larger family size decreased the risk for being overweight based on the three parameters of body composition. Overcrowding in the household increased the risk for greater skinfolds thickness, while low family income increased the risk for higher fat mass index. The residency of grandmothers in their adult daughters' households is not significantly associated with the outcome variables in this sample of urban Maya families. Instead, maternal anthropometric characteristics and socioeconomic conditions of the family have a greater influence on the overall growth of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multiyear field project focused on long-distance causeways between Uci and Cansahcab in Yucatan, Mexico, supports their use for processions and pilgrimages, their role in the creation of multisite polities, and their involvement in the constitution of local authority. Yet details of the causeways' construction suggest that people contested this authority. Work was central to these dynamics and comes in the form of labor as practice, investments in the maintenance of relations with other-than-human beings, and the ways that causeways produced embodied experiences that were ideal for their use in pilgrimages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I argue for a renewed engagement with the concept of positionality in archaeology. I provide a brief history of thinking about the idea of subject position in archaeology, focusing specifically on researcher subjectivity rather than that of past persons. The discussion highlights some of the strands of archaeological thinking where positionality has figured prominently in investigative and interpretative strategies: namely, intersectional, relational, and community‐based archaeologies. I then offer three examples from research in Quintana Roo, Mexico that speak to the ways that grappling with positionality has influenced my and my collaborators' agendas and goals related to the commemoration of the heritage of the Maya Social War (Caste War of Yucatan). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical and political context is essential for evaluating the long-term sustainability of any agroecosystem. Over the past several centuries in Yucatán, Mexico, Maya farmers have practiced milpa (i.e., slash-and-burn) agriculture in ways that are arguably both sustainable and unsustainable depending on whether political leaders created institutional support for farmers to implement a full range of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). To investigate this relationship between political authority and TEK, I trace changes in maize tribute collection before and after contact between Spaniards and Maya. I argue that late pre-contact milpa agriculture was sustainable in part because political leaders supported institutions that allowed farmers to integrate a wider range of TEK. Colonial authorities, however, dismantled these institutions and thereby undermined the sustainability of milpa agriculture. Confronting these lasting Colonial legacies is a critical part of a larger interdisciplinary effort to expand sustainability discourse and promote environmentally just food systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an exercise of questioning the offi cial history of Mayan sexualities in the Southeast of Mexico, especially the Yucatan Peninsula, this article seeks to deepen, reclaim, and re-signify the sex-generic constructions that the Maya have been developing since the pre-Hispanic era. Mayan sex-generic constructions form part of a cosmology and religiosity that sees both the feminine and the masculine as necessary and complementary elements to archive cosmic balance. This worldview not only generated less unequal societies, as demonstrated through the outstanding role of women and non-binary people in Mayan society, but it also resisted, with its respective transformations, centuries of Spanish conquest and colonisation. From this perspective, the diversity of sexualities observed among Mayan peoples today cannot be conceived as a product of Western modernity, but instead as a remnant with roots embedded in more ancient times. The article argues that, to start from Mayan sex-generic constructions for the study of contemporary sexualities requires generating radical dialogues and alliances on equal terms with peoples on whom the colonial hetero-patriarchal binary was imposed, as well as with Western emancipatory processes like Queer Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Overweight/obesity (OW/OB) coexists in mother-child dyads. However, a dearth of evidence on the factors associated with this phenomenon calls for research.Objective: To analyze the association of sociodemographic factors with OW/OB in a sample of 260 Maya mother-child dyads from Yucatan, Mexico.Methods: During 2011 to 2014, we measured height and weight in children and their mothers and calculated their body mass index (BMI). The OW/OB cutoff points were defined, for mothers, as having a BMI >25 kg/m2 and, for children, as having a BMI-for-age >2 standard deviation of the World Health Organization references. Mother-child dyads were grouped according to their BMI status: (1) normal weight mother and child, (2) normal weight mother and OW/OB child, (3) OW/OB mother and normal weight child, and (4) OW/OB mother and child. A multinomial logistic regression model was used to analyze the interrelationships among BMI status in mother-child dyads, household size, and parental education.Results: Overweight/obesity coexisted in 40% of dyads. Compared to normal weight dyads (1), each unit increase in household size and in years of maternal education decreased the risks of the coexistence of OW/OB in mother-child dyads (odds ratio [OR] = 0.72, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.55-0.94, P = .015; OR = 0.70, 95% CI 0.52-0.94, P = .019, respectively). Conversely, each year increase in paternal education increased the risk for OW/OB in dyads (OR = 1.47, 95% CI 1.08-1.99, P = .015).Conclusions: Results suggest that household size and parental education contribute to shape BMI-based nutritional status in this sample of mother-child dyads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon and oxygen isotopes ratios from herbivore teeth have previously been used as paleo-environmental proxies in temperate zones. However, their utility in tropical zones remains uncertain. In this study, sequential sub-samples from white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) teeth (second and third molars) from the Maya archaeological site of La Joyanca, located in northwestern Petén, Guatemala, show that δ18O of enamel carbonate corresponds broadly to modern observed precipitation δ18O over the 10-month period of tooth formation, capturing rainfall seasonality. The analyses also detect significant diachronic differences in the δ18O between the periods 1100–1000 BP (850–950 A.D.) and 1000–900 BP (950–1050 A.D.) at La Joyanca. The δ13C in both periods are indicative of a C3-plant based diet, which suggests cultivation of maize did not differentially affect deer diet during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite centuries of colonialism, Yucatec Maya women and men retain a rich body of specialized culinary practices with roots in the pre-Columbian past. Recently this intangible heritage has become the focus of a variety of forms of culinary tourism, some of which are local enterprises that bring much needed cash into small rural communities. This article presents details about how a small group of women in the Yucatec-Maya speaking village of Yaxunah formed a cooperative to prepare "Maya" meals for visitors. They debate the relative authenticity of the dishes they serve as they negotiate the interests of tourists, economic pressures, and competing claims to heritage. Foodways are a powerful means by which local Maya communities construct and maintain a social identity distinct from dominant national discourse and globalized dietary trends. Likewise household gardens provide a site for the contestation of globalizing forces and the preservation of Maya cultural values. By positioning landscape features and cultural knowledge related to the intangible heritage of Maya culinary traditions within the worldwide tourism industry, this small group of indigenous women present a powerful lesson in adaptation to modern global forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous subjects in Latin America have historically not been recognised as part of the state. When indigenous women are elected as mayors they are positioned between two places. First, they are the state as they have been democratically elected. Second, they are categorised as female indigenous bodies. This interchange of power relations influences female mayors’ decision-making. It will be argued that while some female mayors transform gender and racial norms in their municipalities, others reaffirm them. Whilst some mayors reproduce hierarchical racial-ethnic relations, others have found ways of confronting and utilising existing multicultural policies to create new relations between state and constituents such as incorporating the Maya language and customs in official municipal acts. These actions defy common multicultural practices of toleration and aim to counter the racism constituents have experienced in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes Yucatán’s ‘Monument to Mestizaje’ as the entry point to an analysis of mestizo culture in Yucatán in the 19th and 20th centuries. Providing three genealogies of mestizaje in Yucatán – focused on festivity, language, and theatre – this article takes a historical and performative approach; it focuses neither on the workings of ‘mestizo’ social identity nor on ideologies of mestizaje, but on the performance of mestizo acts in particular historical contexts and in politically charged ways. In festive dances, the speaking of ‘mixed’ Maya, and racial impersonations performed on stages of theatre or politics, Yucatecans enact mestizaje in ways that sometimes ratify hegemonic racial discourses, but other times leave them in pieces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Mexico, the com tortilla has long been imbued with deep meaning; at particular historical moments, it has reflected indigenous backwardness, national culture and women's contribution to social reproduction. In one rural community in Yucatan, tortillas, their place in everyday life and their relationships with human bodies have grown yet more complicated. Over the last century, shifting conditions in the region--a decline in agricultural sustainability, the development of a massive tourist industry, the expansion of mass media and new religious diversity--have altered many of the ways in which people engage with food. This paper examines the tensions between the qualities of foods--and the process of tasting by which they are experienced--and the resistance of some Yucatec Maya women to preparing tortillas at home. Consensus about what good tortillas taste like no longer precludes women's refusal to pat out this staple food by hand. The paper draws distinctions between practices of tortilla preparation and consumption to analyze the links women draw between food, work and class. In doing so, the paper argues that older traditions of cooperation and commensality persist in rural Yucatan despite increasing diversity in both women s everyday labor and their class aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main focus in this article is on four maps from colonial Yucatan, Mexico (c.1542‒1821). The maps illustrate a two-volume set of Maya notarial documents called the Títulos de Ebtún and concern disputed communal rights to Tontzimin, one of the sparse water sources (cenotes) of this arid limestone region, and its surrounding arable land. Mention is also made of two maps of the province of Mani that were included in treaties agreed with the Spanish authorities as a final record of Maya claims to traditional agricultural rights. Although all these maps were produced by Spanish officials, they relate to broader colonial mapping traditions in Yucatan and embody a clear Maya influence. At the same time, they reveal the effect of Maya mapping practices on Spanish notarial and mapping traditions at the close of the colonial period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning in 1914, Yucatecan revolutionary governors promulgated a series of decrees that liberated and regulated labor on henequen haciendas. The first of these decrees banned debt peonage, immediately weakening the pre-revolutionary labor regime, which was based on a mixture of paternalism and coercion. Using census and hacienda data, we show how hacendados and workers adapted to institutional changes and market shocks, allowing output and investment to increase after the Revolution. While there was consider-able continuity in the methods of contracting before and after the Revolu-tion, market participants exhibited agility in shifting among multiple contractual forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the University we must the young people in the expansion of the awareness, which is recognized in the language of nature, developing the sensitivity in the sounds of the wind, the sea, the jungles and the woods. This expansive awareness faces the values of the power, the expansion, the control and the accumulation of capital, with its double reference: war, sacrifice, death and hopelessness. These values outlined the behavior of the mayan societies in the eclipse of its splendor. In recent times, we have built epistemological rationality concerning the phenomena and we organize the results of the scientific research in oral and written speeches, nevertheless, the threat of climatic change, the environmental crisis and the pollution of water, such as in the cenote, is not a tributary custom to the gods and their plans anymore, while it is a daily, purposeless practice, it becomes in the unconscious joy that other suffer, of those who are still part of the stones and the woods, the seas and the infinite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses two aspects of heritage – entanglement and transformation – that became clear during a recent cultural heritage project in Yucatan, Mexico. Regarding entanglement, heritage becomes relevant only when coupled with other concerns, ranging from politics to livelihood to personal biographies. An unpredictable array of entanglements came into being during the project and these entanglements elevated the impact and visibility of local heritage to an unanticipated degree. Transformation refers to the claim that heritage is not frozen in the past. Instead, it is in motion and subject to change. The transformations of heritage discussed in this paper are examined from the perspective of a mobilities paradigm and understood, in part, as resulting from the experience of performing heritage for outsiders for the first time. In so far as the heritage project precipitated changes in identity, this paper explores what is meant by Maya identity and argues that it is a fluid construct that can be both anchored in the past and negotiated in the present. This perspective makes sense of an event in which contemporary people anchored their identity in a spectacular 1000-year-old ruin, but falls short of explaining the uneven recognition of smaller ruins. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Maya heritage is embraced throughout Yucatán as a crucial component of tourism promotions. This, coupled with an emphasis on multiculturalism, makes the state itself a local actor in the marketing of Maya identity through the creation and funding of community-based tourism projects. This article discusses the shifting role of the state in shaping these communities, referencing a Maya village in the Mexican state of Yucatán as the context. The aim is an understanding of the articulation of local tactics to conceal cosmopolitanism while remaining competent in the eyes of funding agencies and the strategies employed by the state that reinforce the importance of performance for tourists. The desire on the part of state creates situations in which individuals are expected to exist in concurrent states of authenticity and modernity, as both traditional and cosmopolitan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of climate change, specifically drought, across the Maya region in the northern Neotropics, remains a topic of lively debate. Part of this discussion hinges on the coherency of response to climatic variability across different archives and proxies. In this paper we present a 6600-year palaeolimnological record from Yaal Chac, a carbonate lake (known locally as a cenote) in the northern lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula, < 2 km from the location of the previously published Aguada X'Caamal record. The Yaal Chac sequence has been analysed for loss-on-ignition (LOI), stable isotopes (δ18O, δ13C) and elemental analysis using μXRF, complemented by some mineralogical, charcoal and pigment data. Mid Holocene sediments, predating evidence of human impact, are carbonate dominated and finely laminated. δ18O values are positive (>2‰), but show no covariation with δ13C. A major transition occurs at ca. 4360 cal yr BP, with a change to generally more organic sediments and increased variability in all proxies. Although direct evidence for anthropogenic activity in the Yaal Chac catchment is limited, it seems feasible that human impact was affecting the system. Comparison with other records from the Northern Maya lowlands and the wider region shows little coherence in the mid Holocene, when Yaal Chac seems to have been quite stable, but possibly responsive to increased climatic seasonality, driving the production of seasonal laminae. In the late Holocene, when the climate was generally more variable, there is more coherence between Yaal Chac and other regional records, including the so called Pan Caribbean Dry Period (3500–2500 cal yr BP) and the droughts of the late Pre-Classic period (1800–1600 cal yr BP). The Yaal Chac record shows no evidence of drought at the time of either the Maya 'hiatus' or the Maya 'collapse' of the Terminal Classic, but does record drying from the 14th to 19th centuries CE, in keeping with other proxy and historical records. This new record from Yaal Chac highlights the spatial variability of responses to climate forcings and the importance of recognising individual system sensitivity. • A new 6600 year palaeolimnological record from Yaal Chac in the northern Maya lowlands. • Finely laminated, carbonate dominated sediments until ca. 4360 cal yr BP, then major transition. • Mid Holocene record seems to reflect enhanced seasonality in an otherwise stable climatic regime. • Late Holocene increased climatic variability and more regional coherence. • No evidence for severe drought at the time of the Maya 'hiatus' or the Maya 'collapse'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article takes as its point of departure the highly contested theoretical terrain of ‘Maya’ identity in Yucatan, Mexico. Set in the physical terrain of a state psychiatric hospital, this article uses a framework of identity culled from the narrative of a young woman, ‘Claudina’, committed to its wards, to argue that being ‘in-between’ categories of ethnic identity, an experience she characterises as a painful sense of ambiguous loss, can be fruitfully analysed using an analytical framework of ethnic identity introduced by Claudina herself. Specifically, I argue that categories of identity culled from Claudina's story –mestizajeandelegancia –represent a valuable opportunity to think about how power dynamics and relationships operate in situations of ambivalent identities and social suffering. To this end, I use Claudina's language as a point of departure for understanding the lived experience of everyday life in Yucatan today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Excavations at the hilltop site of Escalera al Cielo, located in the Puuc Maya region of Yucatan, Mexico, have uncovered evidence of a planned abandonment at the end of the Terminal Classic period (A.D. 800-950). Six buildings investigated among three residential groups contain rich floor assemblages similar to those known from only a few rapidly abandoned sites in the Maya area. Through an analysis of de facto refuse-most of which was recovered in locations of storage and provisional discard—and midden refuse, this paper illustrates how the assemblages represent an example of household-level abandonment with anticipated return. We also consider Escalera al Cielo in light of our present understanding of the political and environmental history of the Puuc region during the late 9th century AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effect of the maquiladora export industry (MEI) on total net annual household income for rural zones of the old Henequenera region of Yucatán. This analysis uses the Propensity Score Matching approach and cross-sectional data from 1,123 inhabitants that make up 247 households in four municipalities: Cuzamá, Homún, Acanceh and Huhi. The findings reveal a strong and significant positive impact on the total annual income of inhabitants working for the MEI in the rural region of Yucatan. Specifically, there is a positive difference that ranges from $8,419 to $9,449 Mexican pesos annually between inhabitants that work for a maquiladora factory and those that work in any other type of activity within or outside of the territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ebtun, Kaua, Cuncunul, Tekom, and Tixcacalcupul are a group of related communities on the Yucatán peninsula described in the corpus of Maya-language documents known as The Titles of Ebtun. In this paper I explore transformations in agrarian practice and material expressions of identity after the Spanish invasion by analyzing archaeological variation in the life histories of places over the last 500 years. As new plants, animals, and technologies were adopted, landscape organization changed, and locales took on new meanings. Ebtun's landscape reflects a historically contingent process that has transformed place and identity, fostering autonomy of cultural practice and renewal of tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to determine the introduction of industrialized modern food in the habitual diet of two Mayan communities of Yucatan, Mexico, as well as some factors, on both the community and the home level, which may explain this incorporation. This transversal study is conformed of 51 families selected through systematic sampling without replacement. The information was obtained from a structured interview that included socioeconomic variables, habitual diet, frequency of food consumption, economic activities, availability of food and governmental assistance. Parametric statistical tests were used to identify differences between communities and families with regard to the consumption of industrialized modern food. The results demonstrate the consumption of modern industrialized food in the habitual diet of both communities without significant differences at this level, but differences were registered at the home level. The role of emigration and social programs in the incorporation of industrialized modern food in the habitual diet of the Mayan homes of these communities is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The region between the Maya capital of Chichen Itza and its port site on the Gulf of Mexico was one of the most heavily traversed landscapes during the Classic period. Vast quantities of trade goods were conveyed inland from the coast on the backs of long-distance traders. This study explores the experiences of these traders as they transported raw materials such as shell and obsidian as well as finished ornaments to the urban center in exchange for salt from the northern salt beds of Yucatan. We utilize archaeological data from sites along this trade route with a focus on Xuenkal, where we have conducted excavations into the nature of regional changes during the expansion of Chichen Itza since 2004. Archaeological data coupled with view-shed and travel-time analyses provide a nuanced perspective on the travel experiences of the traders who maintained one important component of the Classic Maya economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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Much recent literature on indigenous identity politics in Latin America has emphasized the emergence of new discourses on ethnic citizenship. However, the ways in which state-sponsored efforts to validate and revitalize the Yucatec Maya language become relevant to rural Yucatecans reflect far more continuity with older local narratives about the relationship between language use and modernity. Situating contemporary engagements with multicultural language policies within a broader history of locally meaningful language practices complicates the general model of indigenous language communities that has informed many recent studies of Latin American identity politics and reframes scholarly debates that have emphasized contrasts between emergent forms of essentialism or purism and more-traditional means of identity formation. This, in turn, suggests new routes through which multicultural and multilingual policies can be conceptualized for heterogeneous communities of indigenous language speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the literature on indigenous political mobilization in Latin America is now quite extensive, relatively little has been published on why ethnic mobilization has not occurred in some indigenous regions. In this article, I examine a case where there is very little mobilization and organization around ethnic identity: Yucatan, Mexico. I begin with a political history of Yucatan, comparing it with and contrasting it to Chiapas. I then argue that ethnic mobilization in Yucatan is significantly limited for two main reasons: first, Maya peasants had so little relative autonomy under the corporatist regime (1940s-1980s) and official peasant leagues that they were constrained in using the experience garnered in these leagues for subsequent ethnic-based organization; and second, the social organizations and networks that provide activists and potential activists with the capacity to mobilize - namely, peasant leagues and the progressive Catholic Church - have not served as vehicles for leadership training and organization in Yucatan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forms of official multiculturalism that many recent scholars have characterized as a reflection of post–Cold War social movements and emergent forms of neoliberal governmentality can be experienced locally in ways that reflect a greater degree of continuity with older institutions and styles of politics. In Yucatán, ambiguities in the meaning of officially sanctioned categories such as “Maya” and “indigenous” have persisted even as local people and representatives of the state collaborate in the consolidation of official cultural institutions. The collective experience of several generations of Maya speakers in negotiating this ambiguous discursive space creates strong parallels between contemporary multiculturalism and older indigenist policies. [ Maya, Mexico, Yucatán, multiculturalism, indigenous policy, ambiguity] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This account of the everyday politics of the World Heritage archaeological site of Chichén Itzá (Yucatán, Mexico) contributes to a new impulse in the study of heritage and tourism: the interests and participation of multiple publics in the production of sites of national cultural identities and international tourism. For decades, Maya residents in and around Chichén Itzá have been employed in the site’s excavation, maintenance, and protection. For these indigenous heritage workers, patrimonial claims to the site are based not on the monuments themselves but on inherited job positions. The transformation of these workers into a local elite has occasioned contentious broader community politics as other local residents advocate opening the site’s benefit stream to a wider group of stakeholders. This case study thus addresses the role played by heritage workers in the micro‐politics of patrimony at a World Heritage Site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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• Evidence for horticulture within rejolladas dates to the Early Formative period. • Early Classic period human burial found within a rejollada. • Rejolladas used in specific, consistent ways for horticulture and ritual. • Intensive maize and cotton cultivation may have occurred in a rejollada. • Artifact density within rejolladas varies widely. In the northern Maya lowlands, agricultural practices varied as farmers responded to changing local and external circumstances. However, past agricultural dynamics have been difficult to detect archaeologically in the northern Yucatán peninsula of Mexico, in part due to shallow soils and poor preservation conditions. Deeper soils can be found in the region, particularly within landscape features called rejolladas —solution sinkholes that form large, bowl-like areas with characteristics advantageous for horticulture. As part of this study, based in the community of Tahcabo, Yucatán, we interviewed current town residents to understand the factors they consider when deciding what to grow today in centrally-located rejolladas. To determine what people grew within rejolladas in the past, we excavated within them and studied resulting pollen and soil carbon isotope samples. Results show that even as populations changed, farmers living in Tahcabo responded to the landscape, using rejolladas in broadly consistent ways through time. For example, one rejollada was used primarily for gardening, another for ritual activities, and a third for intensive cultivation. Still, innovations occurred—Tahcabo residents used rejolladas more intensively during the Late Formative through Early Classic periods, when populations were high and climate studies reveal a regional drying trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]