Author : Sergio Quezada
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN 13 : 080614579X
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (61 download)
Book Synopsis Maya Lords and Lordship by : Sergio Quezada
Download or read book Maya Lords and Lordship written by Sergio Quezada and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-01-23 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Spanish arrived in Yucatán in 1526, they found an established political system based on lordship, a system the Spanish initially integrated into their colonial rule, but ultimately dismantled. In Maya Lords and Lordship, Sergio Quezada builds on the work of earlier scholars and reexamines Yucatec Maya political and social power, arguing that it operated not over territory, as previous scholars assumed, but rather through interpersonal relationships. The changes to Maya culture imposed by Franciscan friars and Spanish lords worked to unravel the networks of personal ties that had empowered the highest Maya lords, and political power devolved to second-tier Maya lords. By 1600 Spanish rule had fragmented what was left of the interpersonal networks, draining power from the indigenous political structure. Building on Quezada’s seminal 1993 study, Maya Lords and Lordship offers a fundamentally new vision of Maya political power, challenging the established views of anthropologists and ethnohistorians. Grounded in archival sources as well as historical and ethnographic literature, Quezada’s insights and conclusions will influence studies of the Postclassic and sixteenth-century Maya periods.