A significant work by one of anthropology's most important scholars, this book provides an introduction to the Chiapas Mayan community of Mexico, better known for their role in the Zapatista Rebellion.

History of the Maya Indians, their early temples, forms of worship, and astronomical calculations.

In Watching Lacandon Maya Lives, the author follows three generations of one Lacandon Maya family. Readers track the subjects' lives as they shift through events such as marriage, parenthood, and religious conversion, all set against a backdrop of increased tourism, road construction, and the murders of two people in the community. This book encompasses both ethnography and a critique of ethnographic writing. At one level, the book is about social, agricultural, technological, and religious changes that have occurred in a Lacandon Maya community in Mexico. At a second level, the book is a critique of those who invented a Utopian picture of a traditional Lacandon past that never really existed. For cultural anthropologists, or anyone interested in learning more about this Mayan culture.

"A timely and rigorous examination of ethnicity among the ancient Maya, focusing on ethnogenesis and exploring the complexities of Maya identity--how it developed, how it emerged and how it continues to change. Challenges the notion of ethnically homogenous "Maya peoples" for their region and chronology"--Provided by publisher.