The Maya of the Cochuah Region: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on the Northern Lowlands

This volume assembles a range of findings from more than 80 sites examined by members of the Cochuah Regional Archaeological Survey (CRAS) project in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. Chapters discuss this part of the Northern Maya Lowlands from its earliestknown occupation in the Middle Preclassic period to the present. Thus, the volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of a little-known area of the Maya lowlands over a long span of time. Justine Shaw’s opening chapter provides an overview of the CRAS project, the environment of the region, and its occupation history and a thematic overview of the chapters. The second chapter provides a history of research from the 1920s to the present and ties research in the region to topics as diverse as the history of Mesoamerican archaeology, the rise and fall of chiclebased chewing gum, politics, and tourism. A final chapter by Jennifer Matthews compares the results of CRAS work with that of her neighboring project, the Yalahau Regional Human Ecology Project. The intervening 11 chapters discuss a range of disparate archaeological, historical, and ethnographic topics. Dave Johnstone (Chapter 3) examines pottery tradewares through time in the context of mechanisms of exchange. His conclusions will be of interest to people working with pottery in other regions (like myself) and includes useful background on models of Maya trade and exchange over time. The focus of Chapter 4 is the body—specifically the significance of the feet of a queen at the site of Yo’okop. As I began the chapter, I thought the thesis was somewhat absurd, but, as the authors presented evidence and analogies about the meaning of feet among the Maya and other groups, I became intrigued and, eventually, persuaded. Shaw’s discussion of a sweatbath at Yo’okop (Chapter 5) and Alberto Flores Colin’s examination of causeways (Chapter 8) include, like most of the other chapters, excellent literature reviews. This attention to background is one of the strengths of the volume in general. Tatiana Young’s discussion of Terminal Classic political organization in Chapter 6 is another good example—there is enough background information here for this chapter to be useful to people working in other regions. Chapter 7 is a detailed discussion of population mobility in relation to the social and environmental context of drought (e.g., contrasts between the southern and northern lowlands). The focus on water, caves, and fertility continues with Johann Normark’s two chapters on miniature shrines and caves. In his second chapter, Normark makes important critiques—with which I whole-heartedly agree—of the dominant, formulaic, transhistorical cosmological paradigm for the interpretation of caves. Unfortunately, his ideas are embedded in theory that at times obfuscates more than it clarifies. While I believe that much Maya archaeology is under-theorized, and I appreciate Normark’s exploration of geophilosophy, this chapter seems obscurantist and out of place in the volume as a whole. Nevertheless, these three chapters will be of interest to the many archaeologists considering the impact of drought because they point to the need for more nuanced considerations of the impact of, and cultural responses to, drought. The last three chapters are more historical and contemporary in emphasis. Chapter 11 is a fascinating dis-