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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2022
The present-day boundaries of Guatemala and nearby areas, including the Yucatan, encompass the Maya, whose presence can be traced to 2,500 B.C. (Coe: 1966). The Maya have experienced a great part of general evolution, passing from the hunter and gatherer to agricultural/technological levels; they have organized as bands, tribes, and chiefdoms and now live within a modern nation state. Throughout this progression they have had to contend with forces in the natural environment and still continue to adapt to it with many of the techniques assumed to have been part of their cultural repertoire during the phase of sedentary village life in the area. The lack of settlement pattern studies in the Peten region has produced a situation in which the localized definition of tribal society is not yet complete (Sanders and Price: 1968), and until archaeology unearths the remnants and reflections of their struggle, we will be unable to do more than make broad assumptions about Mayan society and culture in the middle Formative period.