Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan: 1648-1812.(Brief Article)

Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1648-1812. By Robert W. Patch (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1993) 329 pp. $49.50

As an archaeologist with something more than a passing interest in current studies of the precolumbian Maya, I have been increasingly perturbed by the tendency of those archaeologists, epigraphers, and art historians working in the Maya area to create "fruit .salad" interpretive models of classic Maya society. Bits of information from colonial documents, popular histories, ethnographies of different Maya groups from highlands and lowlands, and even from other ethnic groups within greater Mesoamerica (as well as from Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, etc.) …