ABSTRACT
Many volumes about the ancient Maya define their subject matter by relying on geographical boundaries and leave it at that. It is our opinion this is an overly simplistic definition, one which simultaneously acknowledges the inherent difficulty of defining ancient Maya culture while circumventing those challenges. As discussed in more detail in Chapter 37 by Edward Schortman and Patricia Urban, in the early part of the 20th century, plenty of ink was spilled attempting to define the borders of what we call “ancient Maya culture,” especially along its southern edge (Longyear 1947; Lothrop 1939; Miles 1957). These efforts acknowledged that settlement patterns and certain other aspects of Maya culture shared many features with other cultures of Mesoamerica, and thus authors relied on Maya art and ceramics, or the presence of hieroglyphic texts, to define the culture area. Eventually these too proved problematic, as Maya ceramics were traded outside their region of origin (they appear famously in large quantities in a neighborhood of Teotihuacan in the Basin of Mexico) as was Maya art. Smaller centers well within what was considered the heartland of ancient Maya society often had no hieroglyphic inscriptions.
