Building Identities: Socio-Political Implications of Ancient Maya City Plans

This thesis examines the evidence for ancient Maya "superstates" as gleaned from an analysis of ancient Maya city plans. While the evidence does imply a correlation between inter- and intra-regional power blocs and shared city plan elements, it also importantly suggests that such correlations may have as much to do with common Maya understandings and expressions of cosmology and ritual integration as with polity relations.