From the Preclassic to the present, Maya peoples have continuously built, altered, abandoned, and re-used structures, imbuing them with new meanings at each transformation. Ruins of the Past is the first volume to focus on how previously built structures in the Maya Lowlands were used and perceived by later peoples, exploring the topic through concepts of landscape, place, and memory. The collection, as Wendy Ashmore points out in her foreword, offers "a stimulating, productive, and fresh set of inferences about ancient Maya cognition of their own past." Contributors include Anthony P. Andrews, Ana Lucía Arroyave Prera, Antonio Benavides C., M. Kathryn Brown, Marcello A. Canuto, Mark B. Child, David A. Freidel, James F. Garber, Charles W. Golden, Stanley P. Guenter, Jon B. Hageman, Richard D. Hansen, Brett A. Houk, Wayne K. Howell, Paul Hughbanks, Scott R. Hutson, Aline Magnoni, T. Kam Manahan, Olivia C. Navarro Farr, Travis W. Stanton, Lauren A. Sullivan, and Fred Valdez Jr.

Travis W. Stanton is an associate professor in the Anthropology Department at the Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, Mexico. Aline Magnoni is a Ph.D. candidate in the Anthropology Department at Tulane University.