Patricia A. McAnany is Kenan Eminent Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A Maya archaeologist who has conducted field research and cultural heritage programs through the Maya region, she is the founder of the Maya Area Cultural Heritage Initiative and co-founder of InHerit: Indigenous Heritage Passed to Present ([...] She is the author or co-editor of several books, most recently Textile Economies: Power and Value from the Local to the Transnational (2011), co-edited with Walter E. Little; Ancestral Maya Economies in Archaeological Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire (2009), co-edited with Norman Yoffee; and Dimensions of Ritual Economy (2008), co-edited with E. Christian Wells. She has published in numerous professional journals and is the recipient of several research awards from the National Science Foundation and of fellowships from the Institute for the Arts and Humanities (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Radcliffe Center for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

Preface to the new edition; 1. Point of departure; 2. Ancestor veneration and lineage organization in the Maya region; 3. Creating a genealogy of place; 4. Lineage as a crucible of inequality; 5. Kin groups and divine kingship in lowland Maya society; 6. Ancestors and archaeology of place; 7. Postscript: the future of the ancestors and the clash between science and human rights.