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The Origins of Maya States, edited by Loa P. Traxler & Robert J. Sharer, 2016. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; ISBN 978-1-93453686-5; hardback £58.00 & $69.95; xxi+681 pp., 87 b/w illus., 37 maps, 3 tables

Within the last decade, our understanding of the rise of early complexity inMesoamerica has been invigoratedwith newer archaeological data from the Maya lowlands that suggests amuchmore complicated relationship between the Olmec and the Maya. The volume edited by Loa Traxler and Robert Sharer provides a framework for re-considering this relationship in that it provides an archaeological summary of our understanding of the rise of complexity among the Olmec, the Maya and other areas of Mesoamerica. Like many edited volumes, The Origins of Maya States took a long time to move from inception to publication. The book was conceived well over a decade ago and the conference that produced the majority of papers was held in 2007 at The University Museum in Philadelphia. While many of these papers were updated after the conference (some as recently as 2016, based on references), recently published archaeological data show that there remains room for debate on dating and origins. Archaeological materials uncovered since the publication of the volume in 2016 showwhy the volume has merit for current research. One of the reasons that the publication took almost a decade to occur was the untimely death of co-editor Robert Sharer in 2012. The final publication of Origins acts as fitting festschrift to him, especially as it largely expounds on his favourite research topic—the Preclassic Maya. The volumewas designed to replace a School of American Research (now the School of Advanced Research) book entitledTheOrigins ofMaya Civilization (Adams 1977).When the 1977 volume was conceived and published, Mayanists were operating with a dearth of archaeological data, and many of the chapters in the 1977 volume could only speculate on ancientMaya origins. The Traxler and Sharer volume presents a plethora of new archaeological data for many geographical areas that are not archaeologically well known, specifically for the highlands and pacific coast of Guatemala and Mexico. These data alone make this volume necessary for practitioners of Maya studies. Although the title focuses on Maya ‘states’, the ‘volume does not seek to define or explain the state as a specific political organization or system’; rather, it seeks to evaluate the extant models for the emergence of Maya states through looking for evidence of complexity and centralization in the archaeological record. Most of the volume’s authors also seek to show that Maya states developed in concert with other early Mesoamerican developments, which is reinforced by the newer archaeological data. Although the ma-