The Maya

Michael Coe and Stephen Houston are archaeologists specializing in Maya civilization, and this is a long running academic reference work, first published in the 1960s and substantially revised across many later editions as Maya hieroglyphic decipherment advanced, since large parts of Maya writing were only readable well after the book's first edition. Its strength is that it has kept pace with a field that changed dramatically, especially after the breakthroughs in reading Maya script, so later editions correct and add to earlier ones rather than standing unchanged. Its method draws on archaeology, decipherment and ethnohistory together. Its limit for a reader is that findings can still shift with new decipherment, so a claim sourced here should be understood as the settled view current to its edition rather than as unchangeable.