BOOK REVIEWS 265

 

I can only recall a single spelling error throughout.

Signs of Power: The Rise of Cultural Complexity in the
Southeast stands as a major contribution to Southeastem
archaeology. For students, academics, and Cultural Resource
Managers alike, this volume is indispensable. Without question
several of the chapters in this book will necessitate the revision
of numerous “Archaic Period” sections in the prehistory
chapters of CRM reports throughout the Southeast and should,
at the very least, give us pause the next time we think about or
speak of so-called “simple” hunter-gatherers. As for the
avocational community, the prospect of potentially boring
theoretical discussions should not dissuade them from reading
this book, especially if they have an interest in the Archaic.
Signs of Power is destined to become a classic and without a
doubt represents a milestone in the study of Southeastern
Archaic societies. I highly recommend this volume.

Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Iximché. C. Roger Nance,
Stephen L. Whittington, and Barbara E. Borg with contributions
by George Guillemin and Sergio Rodas Manrique and Fore-
word by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase, Series Editors.
2003. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL. xxiv + 408
pp., maps, figures, tables, index. $65.00 (cloth).

E. CHRISTIAN WELLS
Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida,
4202 East Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620-8100

This book is about one of the most important archaeological
sites in the Maya world. According to the early colonial
highland Maya chronicle, Annals of the Kagchikels, the
fortified city of Iximché (located in present-day southern
Guatemala) was founded around 1470. It quickly became the
capital of a powerful Maya state with a population in the low
thousands. The central precinct of the city consisted of four
large plazas that defined distinct architectural complexes with
overlapping residential, administrative, and religious functions.
Members of the polity each belonged to one of four lineages
that were represented in the central precinct by a council of
lineage heads. Two of these lineages dominated the social and
political hierarchy, and each provided a “king” to form a system
of dual rulership. Weakened by smallpox and pulmonary plague
in the early 1520s, the Kaqchikel succumbed to Spanish forces
led by Pedro de Alvarado in 1524. Alvarado renamed Iximché,
the City of Santiago, and established it as the first European
settlement in Central America. The Kaqchikel soon abandoned
the city and the Spanish followed suit after little more than a
month of occupation. The great Maya city of Iximché was left
to ruins.

Nearly four centuries later, Swiss archaeologist George
Guillemin carried out the first archaeological study of Iximché.
His work from 1958-1972 resulted in the collection of tens of
thousands of artifacts and human remains from what he
believed were the two royal palaces (“Great Palace 1” and
“Great Palace II”) in the city’s central precinct. Guillemin died
in 1978 before he could complete a comprehensive study of
these materials. Fortunately, his work was not lost, but serves
as the foundation for Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Iximché,
which seeks to, “save essential aspects of these collections in a

written and pictorial record” (p. 4) and, “make accessible this
new or generally unavailable information on the central precinct
at Iximché” (p. 3). The authors of this handsomely produced
volume have certainly succeeded in their task.

The book consists of 12 chapters and five appendixes. After
a brief introduction to the project in Chapter 1 (Nance, Whit-
tington, and Borg), Chapters 2 (Borg) and 3 (Nance) provide a
concise but thorough overview of what we know about the city
from early colonial sources as translated and compiled by
Francisco Ximénez, Adrian Recinos, Robert Carmack, Robert
Hill, and others. Chapter 4 (Nance) provides an overview of
Guillemin’s excavations, showing magnificent and invaluable
photographs of the work in progress. Despite the Herculean
efforts of Guillemin at more than a decade of research, it is
unexpected that Guillemin himself is not included as a co-
author of this chapter. Chapters 5 through 8 (Nance) describe
and analyze the pottery collections, which Nance uses to
provide a radically alternative view of Palace I. He argues that,
instead of finding both royal residences of the two ruling kings
of Iximché, Guillemin uncovered one of the palaces and a
major temple. Chapters 9 and 10 (Whittington) provide detailed
data from osteological and chemical studies of the human
remains that document how Iximché’s occupants lived and died.
Here, Whittington (with David Reed and Robert Tykot) shows
through stable isotope analyses of bone collagen and tooth
enamel that some of the sacrificial victims found in the central
precinct were possibly warrior-elite from neighboring commu-
nities.

The authors use these newly synthesized data in Chapters 11
(Nance) and 12 (Nance, Whittington, and Borg) to explain how
the city’s central precinct functioned. Perhaps the weakest part
of this enterprise is in constructing inferences from imperfect
and incomplete data—a common problem when working with
collections that are poorly provenienced. There are times when
the data are stretched too thin, such as when the authors argue
that the ceramic evidence supports the idea that Palace I was
more “religious” than Palace II, and thus was probably a major
temple. There could be many explanations for the differences
in ceramic assemblages (indeed, even the authors admit that the
results of their quantitative correspondence analysis could be
interpreted in different ways). One explanation that comes
easily to mind, for example, is the possibility that political and
religious offices were not coterminous at Iximché. In other
words, rulership may have been disembedded in the Kaqchikel
state, such that each king maintained a differential degree of
authority in politics (or warfare) or religion. Fortunately, the
appendices provide the raw data so that, ultimately, readers can
reach their own conclusions.

The painstaking efforts of Nance, Whittington, and Borg (and
Guillemin) have produced a valuable collection of critically
important information about early colonial and late pre-colonial
life in the Maya highlands. Two aspects of this book give it
value beyond the immediate use of Mayanists. First, the study
makes a key contribution to the long-term management of
Kaqchikel Maya heritage. Although the Kaqchikels abandoned
Iximché over four hundred years ago, the city remains a unique
and irreplaceable part of Kaqchikel history and worldview. For
the book project to reach its fullest potential, however, summa-
ries of the individual chapters ought to be made available in