[Aztlan] Mexico's unconquered Maya hold tight etc

[Michael Smith]

Below are some scholarly studies (critiques) of the "timeless Maya" notion under discussion. As I see it, there are two threads of this phenomenon: the portrayal of the Maya in the popular press (such as National Geographic, TV shows, etc.), and the portrayal of the Maya by scholars. The former is much more blatant and easy to laugh at or criticize. The latter is far more subtle and sophisticated, and the perpetrators are more likely to fight back when criticized.

I would recommend Cojtí Ren 2002 and Hervik 1998 as good starting places for both of these strands. The debate in Current Anthropology over Klein et al 2002 is very good for one component of this phenomenon (shamanism) as it plays out in the scholarly literature.

Cojtí Ren, Avexnim
2002	Maya Archaeology and the Political and Cultural Identity of Contemporary Maya in Guatemala. Paper presented at the Texas Maya Meetings, University of Texas, Austin.  http://ethical.arts.ubc.ca/Avexnim.html

Hervik, Peter
1998	The Mysterious Maya of the National Geographic. Journal of Latin American Anthropology 4(1):166-197.

Hervik, Peter and Hilary E. Kahn
2006	Scholarly Surrealism: The Persistence of Mayanness. Critique of Anthropology 26:209-232.

Klein, Cecelia F., Eulogio Guzmán, Elisa C. Mandell, and Maya Stanfield-Mazzi
2002	The Role of Shamanism in Mesoamerican Art: A Reassessment. Current Anthropology 43:383-420.

Pyburn, K. Anne
1998	Opening the Door to Xibalba: The Construction of Maya History. In Mexican Codices and Archaeology: Indiana Journal of Hispanic Literatures (special issue), edited by Gordon Brotherston, pp. 125-130, vol. 13. Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

Webster, David
2006	The Mystique of the Ancient Maya. In Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Mispresents the Past and Misleads the Public, edited by Garrett G. Fagan, pp. 129-153. Routledge, New York.


Dr. Michael E. Smith
Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Arizona State University
www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/

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