Reviews for Stone Houses and Earth Lords: Maya Religion in the Cave Context

The average rating for Stone Houses and Earth Lords: Maya Religion in the Cave Context based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-02-04 00:00:00 Lyndsay Wood This is an edited collection, but it has an explicit agenda and the chapters complement each other well in supporting it. The point is to prove the importance of Maya cave archaeology for understanding ancient Maya religion and the importance of ancient Maya religion for understanding ancient Maya society. The book was particularly convincing for me in showing the importance of religion, for example in the chapter "Pilgrimage and Caves on Cozumel," by Shankari Patel, which shows how Cozumel Island's role as a pilgrimage center structured economic exchange instead of the other way round. The contributors rely partly on ethnographic analogy with modern Maya to support the importance of caves, and here they don't make as clear a case for the validity of the approach, but it doesn't seem clearly irrelevant either. There are three parts: one about the relationship between caves and settlement location, one about reconstructing the rituals performed in caves, and one on interpreting human remains (possibly burials, possibly sacrificial victims) found in caves.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-09-17 00:00:00 Vicki L Whisenant Great book. Super helpful analysis on what our culture is missing by denigrating the role of ritual in our lives and communities. Sincerity's logical end, in the absence of ritual, is the total autonomy of the individual to the exclusion of the community. We need shared social space and our culture's prioritization of individual expressions of sincerity preempts our ability to connect across differences. This also affects our art, architecture, and music. Sincerity and individual expression are important, but they cannot be all-important. Ritual helps to connect us to the past as well as to our present community and permits us to connect with future generations as well. Well worth the time.