The Comitán Valley: Sculpture and Identity on the Maya Frontier by Caitlin C. Early (review)

Reviewed by: The Comitán Valley: Sculpture and Identity on the Maya Frontier by Caitlin C. Early Thomas Guderjan The Comitán Valley: Sculpture and Identity on the Maya Frontier. By Caitlin C. Early. Austin, University of Texas Press, 2023, p. 211, 60. 00. The Comitán Valley has seen significant research by archaeologists and art historians for many decades. Despite this field work, there has been insufficient contextualization, and this volume is a very welcome step in the direction of understanding the ancient Maya of the area in a clearer and broader context. Caitlin Early offers us a perspective of the ancient political dynamics of the valley through a tight volume that opens with a chapter that focuses on the valley as a frontier district of the ancient Maya, followed by four chapters on the art and iconography of the region's major archaeological sites (Tenam Rosario, Tenam Puente, Chinkultic, and Quen Santo). The volume concludes with a chapter on the Postclassic period in the valley and a conclusion dealing with frontiers and identity. As an archaeologist who also works in a different Maya frontier and boundary context, I found the discussion of the Comitán Valley to be surprisingly useful and insightful. Early opened several interpretive doors in her discussion, especially given that she is still a young scholar. I recall a review of a volume by one of my mentors at the same stage of his career in which the reviewer anticipated that the author would make major contributions throughout his later career. He did and I anticipate the same for Caitlin Early. Chapter 1, "The Edge of The Maya World, " builds a contextual framework for this volume, drawing on sources as diverse as mid-20th century non-professional publications to the archaeological field work and recent interpretive works. Early's approach to understanding frontier zones is, again, refreshing and informative. I anticipate citing her work in my own. I do have a bone to pick, not with the author specifically, but more broadly with art historians working in the Maya area. Early, like many others, focuses on the public art of Maya centers without a contextualizing discussion of what a Maya center is. Granted, the fieldwork required to determine whether Maya centers of public architecture are centers of populous cities or isolated outposts, for example, has not been done in the Comitán Valley and has traditionally been complex, labor-intensive, and financially costly to undertake. While that is rapidly changing in the past decade due to the capability of LiDAR to quickly (but expensively) create high resolution models of landscape around Maya centers, such work has not yet been done in the valley. Nevertheless, I would strongly welcome a discussion of what nodes of public architecture represent in the framework of Classic Maya society. The next four chapters deal with royal art at the major known sites. This art was clearly for public consumption and aggrandized ruling royal families and individuals as well as depicted captive leaders of other poli-ties. While this is not as complete of a picture as we have of, say, Tikal and End Page 307 Palenque, Early successfully demonstrates that the alliance and aggression were as much a part of Comitán life as at the larger, better-known sites. Her efforts will form a baseline for such research far into the future. Chapter 6, Transformation, documents how the Comitán Valley participated in the end of the Classic Maya way of life. The author discusses the knowable events at the end of the Classic period and the transformation into the Postclassic world. Lastly, in the concluding chapter, Early returns to the theme of frontier and how regional political integration may have shaped perspectives in the valley. End Page 308 Thomas Guderjan Department of Social Sciences University of Texas at Tyler Copyright © 2024 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies