This book is a collection of essays focusing on the role that elites play in shaping modern societies. Critiquing the treatment accorded elites as subjects in recent Western social thought, the essays reflect upon past results and explore directions in the investigation of elite groups by anthropologists.

The contributors to this book scrutinize the data, survey external influences on the early Maya, and consider economics, ecology, demography, and warfare - as well as social and ideological factors - in explaining the transformation of Maya culture from a village-oriented society to one centered on elite classes living in large civic centers with monumental architecture.

Of the many mysteries surrounding ancient Maya civilization, none has attracted greater interest than its collapse in the eighth and ninth centuries AD. Until recently, speculations on the causes of the collapse have been more numerous than excavated sites in the area. But the past twenty-five years have produced many new findings. In this book, thirteen leading scholars use new data to revise the image of ancient Maya civilization and create a new model of its collapse--a general model of sociopolitical collapse not limited to the cultural history of the Maya alone.

This book provides analysis of social anthropology and approaches to the study of patronage and clientage from work done in Latin America in the late 1960s. Essays include discussions on topics as diverse as the effect of societal structures on the actions of individuals and communities wherein women play the roles of both patrons and clients.