28th European Maya Conference: Bonn, Germany
“Regionalism and Unity: Exploring Intracultural Variation and Commonality in the Maya Region”
December 4th to December 10th 2023
The 28th European Maya Conference is co-organised by the European Association of Mayanists (Wayeb) together with the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn and is going to be hosted by the Department for the Anthropology of the Americas of the Institute for Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bonn, Germany, from December 4th to 10th, 2023. The conference will begin on December 4th with a welcome address, and will combine four days of workshops (Tuesday to Friday, December 5th-8th) and a two-day symposium (Saturday to Sunday, December 9th-10th).
The topic of the 28th European Maya Conference is Regionalism and Unity: Exploring Intracultural Variation and Commonality in the Maya Region. We are used to talking about “the Maya” in both popular and academic discourse. But did or does such a single homogeneous Maya culture actually exist? In fact, the idea of a large Maya culture, stretching from the highlands of Guatemala to Yucatan, only emerged in the 19th century in connection with the European desire to divide the world into cultural areas. In this regard, the term “Maya” which originally designated the language and inhabitants of Northern Yucatan, was used for an entire language family and the various peoples speaking these languages and inhabiting the territory that comprises the Mexican states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo, and the countries of Belize, Guatemala, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador.