Proceedings of the conference "The Origins of Maya States," held in Philadelphia, April 10-13, 2007.

The Pre-Columbian Maya were organized into a series of independent kingdoms or polities rather than unified into a single state. The vast majority of studies of

This book examines the emergence of political institutions in Maya civilization through studies of landscape, architecture and material culture.

When the Maya kings of Tikal dedicated their first carved monuments in the third century A.D., inaugurating the Classic period of Maya history that lasted for s