Memory in Fragments: the lives of ancient Maya sculptures

REVIEW BY BRYAN R JUST Megan O’Neil’s Memory in Fragments provides a comprehensive and nuanced presentation of a topic the author has been exploring for years, namely the myriad ways the ancient Maya interacted with monumental sculptures over their long social lives. It is a rich and expansive consideration of a complex array of distinctive practices, all of which, O’Neil effectively argues, related directly to ancient Maya concepts of ancestor veneration, the animacy of things, and the import of ancestors to the living. The book is organised into three overarching sections. The first is introductory, presenting the methodological grounding and defining Maya monuments as material