It has become commonplace in reviews such as this to invoke the significant advances in Maya scholarship that the work under consideration has benefitted from and which it exemplifies. This is due to the fact that, through extraordinary achievements in the decipherment of ancient Mayan writing and the relatively regular discovery of important artworks and artifacts (or even entire cities) by archaeologists, modern understanding of the ancient Maya has progressed at a breathtaking pace over the past generation. Indeed, it would be difficult to understand the importance of the exhibition and book Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom without reference to this trajectory of an ever deepening and more nuanced relationship to the material it presents. And important it is: although the exhibition was modest in scope—eighteen polychrome ceramic vessels made over a few generations during the eighth century CE for the rulers of a single court, displayed in a single room of the Princeton University Art Museum—the accompanying, beautifully designed and lushly illustrated catalogue is ambitious in the thoroughness with which it treats these objects. Curator and author Bryan Just, whose enthusiasm for the technical and aesthetic achievements of ancient Maya artists is palpable, has crafted a superb piece of scholarship that draws upon the most current epigraphic and archaeological knowledge and is both accessible to the layperson and of great value to the specialist.

Along with an excellent introduction and conclusion that will be considered below, the uk’ib (cylindrical vessels) in Dancing into Dreams have been arranged into four chapters that chart a roughly chronological development of the courtly ceramics associated with the Classic Maya Ik’ (Wind) kingdom, located in the tropical lowlands of the Central Petén in modern-day Guatemala and thought to have been centered at the archaeological site of Motul de San José. Additionally, utilizing abundant supporting material including other vessels, monumental inscriptions, and data from archaeological excavations, each chapter is taken as an opportunity to explore these objects from a different perspective.

First, the nature of inter-polity interaction is considered, both through the evidence of the courtly imagery and named individuals painted on the vessels and through the presence of non-locally produced vessels recovered from scientifically excavated burials. Drinking vessels such as these were prestige objects that not only documented historical events and political relationships through their imagery and inscriptions, but also played an ongoing role in elite social interaction, both during feasting and as gifts. This theme is expanded in the following chapter through the investigation of a single ruler, Tayel Chan K’ihnich, both in terms of his biography and dealings with other kingdoms as well as in his role as a patron commissioning uk’ib. Several vessels commissioned by this Ik’ ruler were completed in a style associated with the Mut kingdom of Tikal, depict his interactions with nobles from a variety of other surrounding kingdoms (including the rival Mut kingdom of Dos Pilas), and were found in burials of individuals not depicted on the vessels, demonstrating the complexities of regional interaction manifested by these objects. Next, the output of a single artist, Mo?-n Buluch Laj, is considered. The corpus is assembled around a single signed vessel, with other pots attributed to the artist through careful formal comparisons. The autograph piece belongs to a group of three clearly related vessels depicting wahy, supernatural entities likely representing a variety of diseases and afflictions. Just proposes that another vessel with this theme, the so-called Altar Vase, was the work of Mo?-n Buluch Laj’s teacher, and he identifies two (or possibly three) vessels depicting courtly scenes made several decades after the wahy vessels as probable late works of the named artist. Finally, the dynamics of artistic interaction and development are further explored in a chapter considering a stylistically related group of vessels—the so-called Pink Glyphs vases. Connoisseurship is once again brought to bear on the identification of several distinct hands working both concurrently and sequentially as the development of this sub-style of Ik’ painting is traced. Further essays contributed by other specialists, including a brief summary of the archaeology of pottery production at Motul de San José by Christina T. Halperin and Antonia E. Foias and a discussion of the conservation of Ik’ vessels in the collection of the Princeton University Art Museum by Sarah Nunberg, round out the book.

While the informative treatment of Ik’ vessels outlined above would be enough to recommend the reading of this book by all persons interested in Classic Maya culture, Dancing into Dreams is perhaps even more important as a manifesto of sorts—a passionate assertion of the very real contributions that art historians can make in a field (Pre-Columbian studies) largely populated by social scientists, and an engagingly self-reflective consideration of how the choices, assumptions, and expectations of modern scholars serve to frame our relationship to the ancient past. In the introduction and conclusion, Just gives thoughtful rationales for the numerous—and potentially controversial—decisions he made during the course of preparing the exhibition and catalogue.

His overarching concern involves the redemption of the art object as a primary site of inquiry, a material presence saturated with potential meaning. While rightly extolling the value of archaeological context to modern understanding of the past (and deploring the irrevocably destructive actions of looting and trade in illicit antiquities), Just makes a case for the scholarly utilization of unprovenienced (looted) objects held in private collections, provided they can be documented as having entered the United States prior to the adoption of treaties barring the illicit export of antiquities from the countries of origin (1991 in the case of Guatemala). While Princeton’s policy is more rigorous than many art museums, this nevertheless runs contrary to the guidelines followed by many archaeological publications in recent decades, which, in an effort to eliminate looting and the destruction of ancient sites, have entirely prohibited the publication of objects lacking contextualizing data obtained from scientific excavation. Acknowledging that publications such as Dancing into Dreams, which contains detailed and laudatory discussions of Maya vessels held in private collections, serve to legitimize and add value to these and related objects, Just nevertheless argues (rightly, in my opinion) that the public interest is better served by making these important pieces available for widespread study than by letting them remain known and accessible to only a few fortunate viewers.

But what kinds of information, exactly, can an unprovenienced vessel convey? Epigraphers have long mined private collections to expand the finite corpus of Mayan inscriptions available to them, typically publishing drawings of the vessels rather than photographs. While drawings are useful for iconographic and epigraphic analysis, the close readings of the vessels in Dancing into Dreams make a powerful case for the careful examination of all aspects of these objects. For example, many vessels have undergone significant reconstruction and restoration, often with the result that aspects of their original appearance have been obscured or missing pictorial elements fabricated. As Just’s observations and Nunberg’s conservation essay demonstrate, it is essential to take into account the modern alterations to ancient ceramics. By differentiating the hands of ancient Maya artists from those of modern restorers, attributions achieve a surer footing and gain greater credibility. Just acknowledges that connoisseurship always necessitates a degree of subjective inference; however, he also accurately argues that the data obtained from archaeological excavations are equally subject to interpretation. Thus, a tentative yet clearly reasoned argument that one vessel represents the late work of an artist while another belongs to a different hand emulating the earlier style, for example, can be considered as valid a reconstruction of the past as an archaeologist’s speculative explanation for the presence of a vessel of foreign manufacture in the tomb of a Maya lord. This demonstrates a central methodological challenge of the field of Pre-Columbian studies: a hermeneutic circle whereby objects are analyzed by situating them within an ancient socio-cultural context that is itself almost entirely reconstructed through the modern analysis of objects.

Indeed, Just appears keenly attuned to the rapidity with which interpretations fall out of favor or become overturned in the field of Maya scholarship, as new discoveries and insights regularly call into question prior assumptions. All of the eighteen vessels from the exhibition are presented in a section of stunning full-page images at the beginning of the volume accompanied only by label information, suggesting that the objects themselves have primacy over any possible interpretation of them. These photographs, and most of the additional images found throughout the book, depict single views of the vessels, rather than the rollout photographs pioneered by Justin Kerr in the 1970s that have since become the standard way of illustrating Maya vases. Rollout images allow the entire circumference of a vessel to be viewed at once, which has been especially useful for iconographic and epigraphic analysis. (Some are included in Dancing into Dreams for this reason.) But they also obscure the shape and proportions of vessels, how they would be held and viewed as objects, and the deliberate pacing of figural groups and narrative progression around the perimeter, all aspects that Just emphasizes in his discussions of the uk’ib.

A final aspect of the book worth mentioning is Just’s decision to preface each chapter with a narrative account based upon or relating to one of the vessels. These sections are slightly more conjectural than the more traditional academic discourse that follows them, but the main difference is stylistic: the evidence for the assertions is relegated to footnotes, and the writing is substantially more literary, sensory, and evocative. As Just notes, this sort of narrative reconstruction is not unprecedented in Maya studies, and it is certainly well deployed here. The end result is a text that finds a harmonious balance between the rigor and substance of scholarly analysis and the relatable immediacy of a flowing story.