Abstract

In recent decades studies of ancient Mesoamerican texts and images have increasingly ventured into questions of the human experience, and Houston’s thoughtful inquiry into the crucial place of male adolescence for the Maya during the first millennium AD is among the most ambitious of these projects. Drawing upon evidence from the hieroglyphic record, the artistic corpus, and material culture, this study consolidates and recasts over a decade of Stephen Houston’s investigations into what it meant to be a young man in the ancient Mayan world. In investigating this facet of Classic-era culture and exploring the rites and processes by which Mayan males were socialized, this important book lends a critical new perspective to pre-Columbian Mesoamerican studies.