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Shamans, Witches and Maya Priests: Native Religion and Ritual in Highland Guatemala. By Krystyna Deuss. (London: The Guatemalan Maya Centre, 2007. Pp. 334, dedication, photographs, illustrations, preface, introduction, appendices, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. $49.50 paper.)
For over thirty years, Krystyna Deuss traveled to Guatemala to study textiles, gathering an extensive collection and producing a large encyclopedic volume on the subject: Indian Costumes from Guatemala. The contents and presentation of Shamans, Witches and Maya Priests follow that same pattern of collection and exhibition of material. During her field trips to Guatemala, Deuss regularly interacted with traditional religious leaders in the Huehuetenango, a region in the Northwest comer of the Guatemalan highlands. Her book documents the dances, ceremonies, festivals, and rituals she observed and participated in, as well as the religious information she learned from these interactions, such as local Maya calendar day names and prayers.
Deuss's overall purpose is to document the traditional religious practices of the indigenous people near Huehuetenango. Her extensive career in documentation and museum work shows in the presentation of her material. Primarily ethnographic with little to no concern for theoretical analysis, Shamans, Witches, and Maya Priests is so detail-rich that a close reading would best serve a serious researcher concerned...