For years scholars have observed the ability of the Maya to continue traditions and rituals connecting them to their historical past. As the title of Allen Christenson's most recent work states, in many ways the contemporary Maya bear “the burden of the ancients,” particularly in their ceremonies of world renewal. Christenson's work among the Guatemalan Maya stems from his extensive fieldwork and knowledge of the languages, including K'iche’ and Tz'utujil. His experience among the Maya allows his current work to reveal in new ways how contemporary Maya, particularly the Tz'utujil community of Santiago Atitlán, continue world-renewing rites today that date back to the pre-Columbian era. Indeed, employing a wide range of documentation, from ancient Maya art and sculpture to Spanish and indigenous colonial accounts and modern ethnographic observations, he argues that world renewal ceremonies associated with the pre-Columbian Wayeb’—or the five final days of the Maya's solar calendar—survived the conquest...
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May 1, 2019
Book Review|
May 01 2019
The Burden of the Ancients: Maya Ceremonies of World Renewal from the Pre-Columbian Period to the Present
The Burden of the Ancients: Maya Ceremonies of World Renewal from the Pre-Columbian Period to the Present
. By Christenson, Allen J.. Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies
. Austin
: University of Texas Press
, 2016
. Photographs. Illustrations. Figures. Bibliography. Index. x, 363 pp. Paper
, $29.95.Hispanic American Historical Review (2019) 99 (2): 337–338.
Citation
Mark Christensen; The Burden of the Ancients: Maya Ceremonies of World Renewal from the Pre-Columbian Period to the Present. Hispanic American Historical Review 1 May 2019; 99 (2): 337–338. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-7370258
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