The Maya of the Cochuah Region
The Maya of the Cochuah Region
Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on the Northern Lowlands
In recent years the Cochuah region, the ancient breadbasket of the north-central Yucatecan lowlands, has been documented and analyzed by a number of archaeologists and cultural anthropologists. This book, the first major collection of data from those investigations, presents and analyzes findings on more than eighty sites and puts them in the context of the findings of other investigations from outside the area. It begins with archaeological investigations and continues with research on living peoples. Within the archaeological sections, historic and colonial chapters build upon those concerned with the Classic Maya, revealing the ebb and flow of settlement through time in the region as peoples entered, left, and modified their ways of life based upon external and internal events and forces. In addition to discussing the history of anthropological research in the area, the contributors address such issues as modern women’s reproductive choices, site boundary definition, caves as holy places, settlement shifts, and the reuse of spaces through time.
Justine M. Shaw is a professor of anthropology at the College of the Redwoods and a research associate at Humboldt State University. She has served as the co-principal investigator of the Cochuah Regional Archaeological Survey since 2000. She is the author of White Roads of the Yucatán: Changing Social Landscapes of the Yucatec Maya and coeditor of Quintana Roo Archaeology.
