The three authors of this study have collaborated in an effort to reconstruct the sociocultural history of Iximché, the political capital of the most powerful Late Postclassic Kaqchikel-Mayan polity of the Guatemalan highlands. Their overall methodology consists of describing and interpreting information from three different sources: archaeology, forensics, and ethnohistory. They take the position that the different kinds of information generally complement one another. By integrating the three types of sources, they claim to have achieved the first substantive history of Iximché, one of the most comprehensive examinations of ceramics in highland Guatemala based on modern techniques of analysis, and perhaps the most exhaustive study of skeletal remains of a highland Mayan population. It seems to me that they have indeed realized their claims with the publication of this book. Incidentally, I do not think that the authors have been pretentious about their study. As they state in the conclusions,...
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