xvii, 404 pages : 25 cm

"The Precolumbian ballgame, played on a masonry court, has long intrigued scholars because of the magnificence of its archaeological remains. From its lowland Maya origins it spread throughout the Aztec empire, where the game was so popular that sixteen thousand rubber balls were imported annually into Tenochtitlan. It endured for two thousand years, spreading as far as to what is now southern Arizona. This new collection of essays brings together research from field archaeology, mythology, and Maya hieroglyphic studies to illuminate this important yet puzzling aspect of Native American culture. The authors demonstrate that the game was more than a spectator sport; serving social, political, mythological, and cosmological functions, it celebrated both fertility and the afterlife, war and peace, and became an evolving institution functioning in part to resolve conflict within and between groups. The contributors provide complete coverage of the archaeological, sociopolitical, iconographic, and ideological aspects of the game, and offer new information on the distribution of ballcourts, new interpretations of mural art, and newly perceived relations of the game with material in the Popol Vuh. With its scholarly attention to a subject that will fascinate even general readers, The Mesoamerican Ballgame is a major contribution to the study of the mental life and outlook of New World peoples."--Publisher's description

Includes bibliographical references (pages 347-387) and index

Preface -- List of contributors -- Part I. Northern Mesoamerica. The politicization of the Mesoamerican ballgame and its implications for the interpretation of the distribution of ballcourts in central Mexico / Robert S. Santley, Michael J. Berman, and Rani T. Alexander -- Pre-Hispanic ballcourts from the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico / Stephen A. Kowalewski [and others] -- And then they were sacrificed : the ritual ballgame of northeastern Mesoamerica through time and space / S. Jeffrey K. Wilkerson -- The western Mesoamerican Tlachco : a two-thousand-year perspective / Phil C. Weigand -The known archaeological ballcourts of Durango and Zacatecas, Mexico / J. Charles Kelley -- The Mesoamerican ballgame in the American Southwest / David R. Wilcox --Part II. Southern Mesoamerica. Courting in the southern Maya lowlands : a study in pre-Hispanic ballgame architecture / Vernon L. Scarborough

Ballcourts of the northern Maya lowlands / Edward B. Kurjack, Ruben Maldonado C., and Merle Green Robertson -- "Bois Ton Sang, Beaumanoir" : the political and conflictual aspects of the ballgame in the northern Chiapas area / Eric Taladoire and Benoit Colsenet -- The ballcourts of southern Chiapas, Mexico / Pierre Agrinier -- The ballgame in the southern Pacific coast Cotzumalhuapa region and its impact on Kaminaljuyu during the Middle classic / Lee A. Parsons -- The lords of light versus the lords of dark : the postclassic highland Maya ballgame / John W. Fox -- Part III. Iconography and symbolism. Ceramic figurines and the Mesoamerican ballgame / Susanna M. Ekholm -- Ballgame imagery of the Maya lowlands : history and iconography / Marvin Cohodas -- The courts of creation : ballcourts, ballgames, and portals to the Maya otherworld / Linda Schele and David A. Freidel -- Ballgames and boundaries / Susan D. Gillespie -- Bibliography -- Index