Archaeologists are continually faced with a pervasive problem: how
can cultures, and the interactions among cultures, be
differentiated in the archaeological record? This issue is
especially difficult in peripheral areas, such as El Salvador,
Honduras, and southern Guatemala in the New World. Encompassing
zones that are clearly Mayan in language and culture, especially
during the Classic period, this area also includes zones that seem
to be non-Mayan. The Southeast Maya Periphery examines both aspects
of this territory. For the Maya, emphasis is on two sites:
Quirigua, Guatemala, and Copan, Honduras. For the non-Maya zone,
information is presented on a variety of sites and subregions-the
Lower Motagua Valley in Guatemala; the Naco, Sula, and Comayagua
valleys and the site of Playa de los Muertos in Honduras; and the
Zapotitan Valley and the sites of Cihuatan and Santa Leticia in El
Salvador. Spanning over two thousand years of prehistory, from the
Middle Preclassic through the Classic and the poorly understood
Postclassic, the essays in this volume address such topics as
epigraphy and iconography, architecture, site planning, settlement
patterns, and ceramics and include basic information on chronology.
Copan and Quirigua are treated both individually and in comparative
perspective. This significant study was the first to attempt to
deal with the Periphery as a coherent unit. Unique in its
comparative presentation of Copan and Quirigua and in the breadth
of information on non-Maya sites in the area, The Southeast Maya
Periphery consists largely of previously unpublished data. Offering
a variety of approaches to both old and new problems, this volume
attempts, among other things, to reassess the relationships between
Copan and Quirigua and between Highland and Lowland ceramic
traditions, to analyze ceramics by neutron activation, and to
define the nature of the apparently non-Mayan cultures in the
region. This book will be of major interest not only to Mayanists
and Mesoamerican archaeologists but also to others interested in
the processes of ethnic group boundary formation and maintenance.
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