Overview

Drawing on archaeological findings from the Maya lowlands, War Owl Falling shows how innovation and creativity led to social change in ancient societies. Markus Eberl discusses the ways eighth-century Maya (and Maya commoners in particular) reinvented objects and signs that were associated with nobility, including scepters, ceramic vessels, ballgame equipment, and the symbol of the owl. These inventions, he argues, reflect assertions of independence and a redistribution of power that contributed to the Maya collapse in the Late Classic period. Eberl emphasizes that individual decision-making – the ability to imagine alternate worlds and to act on that vision – plays a large role in changing social structure over time. Pinpointing where and when these Maya inventions emerged, how individuals adopted them and why, War Owl Falling connects technological and social change in a novel way.

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9780813056555

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Reviews

""This well-written book addresses innovation and social change among the Classic Maya (300-1000 A. D.) and is highly innovative in itself since it deals with an issue Mayanists have rarely addressed before. . . . This is imagination as a potential for innovation used by individuals who are embedded in a society governed by its own logic and ontology.""--Anthropos ""[An] engaging, valuable book. . . . Anchored in deep acquaintance and appreciation of the myriad perspectives now informing engagement with the material remains of the Maya past, its reasoned sequence of formidably intricate, yet clearly didactic critiques of ideas relevant to interpreting how innovation and creativity might have manifested over time in Maya social life and culture are the point.""--Journal of Anthropological Research ""Con el libro War Owl Falling, Markus Eberl ha contribuido al estudio de los mayas clásicos de una forma que combina de manera innovadora lo descriptivo y empírico con la interpretación sociológica.""--Iberoamericana: América Latina - España - Portugal

Author Information

Markus Eberl, associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University, is the author of Community and Difference: Change in Late Classic Maya Villages of the Petexbatun Region and coauthor of Muerte, entierro y ascencion: Ritos funerarios entre los antiguos mayas.

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