Middle Preclassic Maya Society: Tilting at Windmills or Giants of Civilization? (original) (raw)

For the Maya lowlands, the study of the rise of ancient complexity must explain the alchemy that transmutated a particular blend of social practices, developed in sedentary subsistence farming communities, into ideologies of hereditary inequality and divine rulership. Specifically, this chapter addresses the potential drivers of social complexity in the lowland Maya area of the Preclassic period by focusing on the social relations that shaped the everyday lives of this area's inhabitants. In other words, how did social forms of identity, interaction, and organization of the Preclassic Maya condition the development of socio-political complexity?